


A Choice

by Isabeau_Gower



Category: Saiyuki
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-07-11
Updated: 2006-07-27
Packaged: 2017-10-20 21:34:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 22,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/217312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isabeau_Gower/pseuds/Isabeau_Gower
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are decision that we make in life that challenge and define us.  The men traveling west have already had to make more choices and sacrifices than most, but when Nii sends them one they never expected, how will they react and what will they do?  Genjo Sanzo has a choice to make, and there may be no good answer this time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written in response to a challenge. In the course of the storyline, the issues of reproductive freedom and choice will be a central theme. If this will bother you, please be advised that it is there.

A Choice  
Chapter One  
Saiyuki Fandom  
Isabeau Gower

Disclaimer: Saiyuki is the property of Minekura Kazuya. I derive no profit from the writing and posting of this piece of fanfiction.

 

Nii watched the Sanzo party’s progress from the monitor in his darkened lab. It was time for the fun to begin.

***

Hakkai surveyed the battlefield as Gojyo’s weapon arced over his head and killed yet another youkai.

“What’s up, Hakkai?”

“There just doesn’t seem to be any point in this attack, Gojyo.” Pausing briefly to fire a blast of chi at an oncoming pair of attackers, he then continued, “There’s no pattern and no tactics.”

Gojyo wasn’t really bothering to study the enemy’s movements; he just took them out as they came within range of his weapon. “No, but Goku’s certainly enjoying himself.”

Both men glanced over to watch their traveling companion. Goku swung the nyoi-bo over his head and brought it around in front of him, taking out six opponents in one swing.

No one noticed that Sanzo was taking the time to reload his gun; no one except the enemy. A lone agent sitting in a tree had been watching the battle rather than participating. With Sanzo distracted and no one else to get in the way, he took careful aim with the dart gun and fired directly into Sanzo’s abdomen.

The string of expletives coming from Sanzo’s mouth wasn’t anything new, nor was the sound of gunfire, so the others didn’t immediately notice that there was anything wrong. Suddenly the enemy broke off the attack and retreated as quickly as they had come.

Goku was the first to notice that the priest was on his knees in the tall grass. “Sanzo! Sanzo! What is it?”

All three ran to Sanzo who was now down on his hands and knees, retching violently into the weeds. Between spasms, Sanzo managed to croak out, “Get it… get it out…of me.”

Hakkai gently took hold of Sanzo’s shoulders and tried to sit him up. “Gojyo, could you please hold his other shoulder and help me get him upright?”

Trying to force his stomach to settle, Sanzo took a deep breath and moved in the direction he was being pushed. As much as it hurt physically, the fact that he had been caught unawares annoyed him even more and he wanted the evidence of it gone.

“Hakkai,” Goku asked. “What’s that thing in Sanzo’s stomach?”

“Dude, is that some kind of dart?” Goyjo reached forward and tried to remove the missile, but when Sanzo groaned and blood appeared around the wound, he stopped.

“So it would appear, Gojyo. Can you hold him still while I try to figure out a way to extract it?”

Gojyo moved behind Sanzo and held his upper torso in a two handed grip as Hakkai examined the dart carefully.

“Sanzo, I’m afraid it appears as though the dart has some kind of barbs to prevent its easy removal.”

Gritting his teeth, Sanzo answered, “I don’t care if it has a damned anchor attached to it, Hakkai. Rip the fucking thing out now.”

Seeing no other alternatives, Hakkai braced one hand on Sanzo’s chest and used the other to force the dart from the priest’s body. With considerable force and a great deal of lost blood and tissue, the dart finally gave up its hold and was pulled free. Immediately, Hakkai began to use his chi to close the damaged flesh.

“Sanzo,” Goku asked quietly, “are you okay now?” He shifted nervously from one foot to another and berated himself for letting Sanzo be injured.

No sooner had Hakkai finished when Sanzo shrugged off Gojyo’s grip and moved away to sit on a clean patch of grass. “Fine,” Sanzo growled. He decided digging for his cigarettes was a good way to hide the fact that he didn’t think he could stand yet. “Hakkai, get Hakuryu back here. We’re leaving as soon as I finish this smoke.”

Gojyo watched as Sanzo tried to shake a stick out of his pack and saw the way the priest’s hands shook. Quickly grabbing his own smokes, he lit one and passed it to the pissy priest. “Here, take one of mine, man. I think I owe you one from last week when I was out.”

Both men knew perfectly well that Sanzo never shared his cigarettes, but the priest took the offered smoke all the same, grateful for the cover.

Goku watched the other two while Hakkai called down his dragon friend and asked him to return to jeep form. “Can I get you anything, Sanzo?” Goku was desperate to know that things were alright and to make amends. Sanzo was his sun. How could he have ignored him like that?

The sound of Goku’s worry was bleeding into his brain and making his head hurt. He had to distract the monkey quickly or he’d have to resort to the fan, and right now, he wasn’t sure he could swing it. Thinking quickly, he finally asked, “Yeah, go get a clean cloth from Hakkai and wet it in the stream over there. I want to wash some of this crud off of me before we get going.”

In point of fact, there was plenty of water in the jeep to clean up with, but Goku was so excited to be able to help in some way that he never realized Sanzo was just getting him out of eyesight for a while. Happy to have something to do, Goku got the washcloth from Hakkai and ran for the nearby stream.

As soon as Goku was out of sight, Sanzo put out the cigarette and struggled to stand. Two hands appeared in his vision, one darkly tanned, the other less so. “I don’t need any help,” Sanzo growled at the two remaining men.

“Of course you don’t, Sanzo. I was only offering for efficiency’s sake since I happened to be standing here.” Hakkai smiled broadly as he spoke his pack of half truths.

Presented with another escape for his pride, Sanzo took Hakkai’s proffered hand and slowly gained his feet. He would not, however, allow anyone to keep hands on him for the walk back to the jeep. He would do that himself or crawl there first. He managed to gain his seat just as Goku returned with the washcloth.

Giving himself a quick once over with the cool, wet towel. He passed the rag back to Hakkai and said, “Let’s go.”


	2. A Choice, chapter two

A Choice, chapter two  
Saiyuki Fandom  
Isabeau Gower

Disclaimer: Saiyuki is the property of Minekura Kazuya. I derive no profit from this work of fanfiction.

 

For the next three days, the journey west was blissfully uneventful. There were no youkai attacks, no unexplained occurrences, no odd towns that needed to be rescued. There was only fresh air, long roads, and warm afternoon sunshine that invited long naps.

Sanzo insisted that he was fine and showed no lingering effects from the unexplained dart. Whatever it might have been, the priest seemed to have escaped unharmed. There was no infection, no pain, no fever, and his appetite was fine. In fact, instead of picking at his food as he usually did, he was eating entire meals with the rest of the party on a regular basis.

After a week without a battle, Goku and Gojyo started to grow bored and bored meant taunting each other.

“Move over, you stinky kappa. Maybe if you weren’t afraid of water, you’d smell better.”

“What?! At least I’m not a walking napkin, you smelly monkey!”

As the pair in the back became rowdier, Hakkai turned towards his front seat passenger and expected to see a fan or gun in hand or at least a vein throbbing in his temple. What he saw gave him pause.

Pulling Hakuryu to the side of the road, Hakkai turned in his seat and stared in amazement at a Sanzo who was sound asleep in the midst of the chaos.

Confused at to why he’d stopped the vehicle, Gojyo and Goku turned to look at Hakkai who merely nodded his head in Sanzo’s direction. Sanzo was just beginning to stir and notice that the movement of the jeep had ceased.

“Problem, Hakkai?” Sanzo muttered, still not fully cognizant.

“I just want to consult the map, Sanzo. I believe we may need supplies sooner than I anticipated and I want to see if there’s a convenient town nearby.” What Hakkai said was the truth, as far as he spoke. They were running out of food much quicker than usual and they would need to resupply. It was what he left out of his statement that was important.

Fitting his actions to his words, Hakkai retrieved the map and stepped out of the jeep to lay it out over the hood of the vehicle. While he was studying their present position, Gojyo joined him.

“You’re worried,” Gojyo observed quietly, “and not about the supplies.”

Hakkai forced himself to keep his eyes trained on the map, but he inclined his head slightly in response to the question. He was indeed worried, but he wanted to talk to Gojyo where there was no chance of being overheard by either Sanzo or Goku and that would have to wait. He certainly hoped it might all be his imagination running away with him. The sick foreboding in the pit of his stomach suggested otherwise and according to the map, they were still six days away from the nearest town.

The next day dawned overcast and threatening. While Sanzo finished his morning coffee, Hakkai asked Goku to retrieve the oiled rain capes from the luggage and moved to the side of the camp with Gojyo to ‘pack’. Putting their heads together, they began to converse in quiet whispers.

“Does it seem to you, Gojyo that Sanzo is sleeping more than usual?”

“I don’t know, Hakkai. Sometimes he sleeps a lot if he’s been injured or has a headache. I’m more surprised by the way he’s been eating. It’s like he starting to give Goku a run for his money.”

Hakkai nodded, he had noticed Sanzo’s atypical eating as well. “And yet, Gojyo, his face almost seems drawn. If he’s eating and drinking this well, why should that be?”

The sound of a throat being cleared made both men look behind them to the sight of an annoyed priest.

“Something you want to share with the rest of the class?” Sanzo’s voice dripped with sarcasm. He did not look happy.

Gojyo leaned over to Hakkai’s ear and gave it a quick lick and nibble before answering, “Nothing you’d want to hear about, oh honorable Sanzo-sama.”

Hakkai squirmed away at the intimate touch. “Gojyo, what are you doing?”

“Tch.” The priest turned on his heel and made his way to the waiting jeep. ‘Let the idiots pack up if they’re feeling so damned energetic this morning.’

Gojyo gave Hakkai a wink and picked up the last of their supplies before turning back to load jeep. Hakkai tugged at his ear, still wet with Gojyo’s saliva, and wondered at his friend’s action. ‘He was just distracting Sanzo, that’s all it was, right?’

Hakkai maintained a steady stream of self questioning all the way to the jeep and for the next four hours of the drive. ‘It doesn’t mean anything at all.’ He nodded vigorously in response to his own internal debate and never noticed the strange looks being directed his way. ‘Gojyo is a natural born flirt; it’s his way of dealing with any kind of stress. Definitely.’ There was a certain amount of muttering going on at this point, not all of Hakkai’s musings were as mental as he thought.

Sanzo, Goku and Gojyo stared at Hakkai who seemed far more focused on his own ramblings than where he was driving. They could make out a few words of his mumblings: ‘flirt’, ‘stress’, ‘definitely.’

A scent in the air caught Goku’s attention and he sat fully upright in the back seat. Gojyo slapped Hakkai’s shoulder to get his attention while Sanzo asked, “What is it, Goku?”

Face growing pale, Goku looked back at Sanzo. “Blood, a lot of it and all human.”

“Which way, Goku?” Hakkai asked.

Goku tested the air again, trying to get a fix on the location of the trouble. “I think it’s down the road a little more and off to the left.

Now fully alert, the group continued their drive in silence and watched their surrounding for hints of danger. A few minutes later, a farmhouse came into view just a few hundred yards off the road.

“Is that it, Goku?” Hakkai asked.

A dangerous look on their young companion’s face was hint enough, but Goku answered quietly, “Yeah, that’s it. It’s bad, guys. It smells like death.”

The clearing where the house and surrounding fields sat was deceptively quiet and the overcast skies added to the gloomy feeling of foreboding. With a nod of his head, Sanzo gestured to Hakkai to drive up to the structure and the others summoned their weapons to their hands.

Parked just outside the building, the scent of decay was now strong enough for all of them to notice it. There were dead inside and not recent dead either. Hakkai reached into the luggage and pulled four long strips of cloth for all of them to use as makeshift masks. This would not be pleasant, but if there was a chance of even one survivor it would be worth it.

Goku stood between Sanzo and the house while Hakkai opened the front door. The overwhelming stench poured from the door and Gojyo gagged despite the cloth. Hakkai took a step around the corner for some fresh air and then moved quickly into the house, opening all the doors and windows before retreating.

“I’m sorry Sanzo, I didn’t see anyone alive. I believe we should be able to enter in a few minutes once the wind carries the worst of the smell away.”

They retreated to the jeep for fifteen minutes and Gojyo helped himself to several swallows of water to rinse his mouth and settle his stomach. Noticing Hakkai’s look of worry, Gojyo said, “S’okay man. I’m fine. Just forgot to breathe through my mouth, you know.”

It would take the better part of the day and several trips outside for each of them before they cleared the farmhouse. Inside they had found the bodies of four men, three women, and four children: two four year olds, and two newborns.

The two newborns and the four men appeared to have been dead the longest, perhaps ten days. There were no marks of violence on the children, but all four men had vast open wounds covering their abdomens. On one man the trauma appeared so violent, it looked almost as if a small bomb had gone off in his stomach.

The three women and two remaining children had died much more recently, perhaps as little as two days ago and all had had their throats slit. There were marks of a struggle on two of the women’s bodies but none at all on the children. The faces of the four year olds were frozen in a completely expressionless state, while those of the women hinted at great terror.

It would be fully dark if lingered long enough to bury the dead individually. A fire would be best, but with the number of bodies, it just wasn’t safe to build that large a pyre in this area. Hakkai, Gojyo and Goku worked as quickly as they could and dug one large grave rather than individual ones. It wasn’t their first choice, but it was better than leaving the poor people in the state they had been found. Sanzo retrieved sheets from the rooms and the bodies were wrapped and carefully placed in the ground.

The weather was threatening rain and it was nearly dark by the time they finished but no one suggested staying in the farmhouse. Hakkai drove for three hours under the moonlight until they found a place to camp near a stream. Each of them took a turn soaking in the cleansing waters and tried to wash away the memories as much as the blood.

*****

As Nii watched the Sanzo party carry out the bodies of the dead from the monitor in his comfortable lab, his assistant stood behind him and looked over his shoulder.

Wrinkling her nose in distaste, she asked, “Why didn’t you order the Lady’s men to clean up your mess when you were done?”

“Why ever should I? The dead are the dead. What difference does it make if they feed the soil, the worms, or the scavengers? Besides,” he paused as he turned Bunny to look and wave at the annoyed woman, “Bunny says it’s so much more fun this way. It will be interesting to see how they piece it all together.”


	3. Chapter 3

By the time they arrived in town five days later, even Sanzo, with all his powers of stubborn denial, knew that he had a problem. It was clear that he was ill. His hair had lost its luster and was falling out. His skin was blotchy and hung from his frame. His eyes were dull and he had no energy. To a casual observer, one could have mistaken him for a victim of starvation.

Knowing that he had a problem and letting it show in front of strangers were two different things, however. When Hakkai pulled up to the inn, Sanzo stepped out of the jeep and carefully walked into the structure under his own power. Leaving Gojyo and Goku to sort out the luggage, Hakkai followed at a careful distance and opened doors.

Finally reaching the front desk, Sanzo leaned heavily on it while digging through his robes and retrieved the Three Aspects’ credit card. “Rooms,” was all he managed to say when the attendant arrived.

“Of course, sir. Will you need one room or two?” The clerk, having noticed Hakkai’s arrival, asked before he handed over a registration card.

Pulling it toward himself, Hakkai began to fill out the paperwork.

“We need four rooms, if you have them. There are two more people with us.” Sanzo battled with himself to keep his voice strong and even, but the short trip inside had left him winded and his voice felt strained. Still, the look of pity on the clerk’s face was annoying and Sanzo tried to use that irritation to find some inner reserves of strength.

“I’m terribly sorry, sir. We only have two doubles or three singles currently available.” The clerk saw Sanzo’s attempt at a glare and realized that he had been staring. Ducking his head, the unfortunate man fiddled with the credit card and paperwork while he waited for an answer.

The space behind the front desk had a mirror and when the clerk bent over, Genjo Sanzo got his first chance since their last hotel stay to see how he looked. It was one thing to feel ill, but now he could see what everyone else did. The face looking back at him was almost unrecognizable and he stood frozen and speechless.

Hakkai quickly interjected, “We’ll take the two doubles please.”

The clerk, grateful for a response, retrieved the keys quickly and handed them over to Hakkai. Leaning close, he whispered, “I’m afraid both rooms are up on the third floor.”

“That’s alright.” Hakkai found his reassuring smile and fixed it carefully on his face. “I’m sure we’ll manage.” Turning to the priest, he carefully touched Sanzo’s sleeve to get his attention. “Sanzo? Why don’t you wait here while we fetch the luggage?”

He hated this, absolutely hated this, but his body was failing him and he could sit down or fall down. At least this option left him some pride. With a nod of his head, Sanzo shuffled to the side of the room where a large bench was placed near a window.

“Excuse me, sir.” The clerk waved to Hakkai to regain his attention. “Did you say, Sanzo?”

Hakkai was wary, but he had already spoken so there was no point in denying it. “Yes, why?”

“Genjo Sanzo?” The clerk persisted.

Sanzo and Hakkai both turned suspicious looks on the man who blanched at the intense attention.

“Umm, it’s just that someone left a letter here addressed to a Genjo Sanzo and asked us to deliver it when he arrived.”

Sanzo narrowed his eyes. This was not good. The only people who would know that they were headed this way were people who wanted them dead. “Where is this letter?” he finally asked.

The clerk disappeared into the office for a brief moment before returning with a plain white envelope and handing it over to the priest who examined it carefully. Other than Sanzo’s name, there were no other marks on the surface of the paper envelope and the seal remained intact. After thanking the clerk, Sanzo tucked the envelope in the sleeve of his robe. He had no intention of reading it here in the open. Whatever it was could wait until they were in their rooms.

When Hakkai exited the building, Sanzo turned on the bench and watched out the window. He could see that the three were talking but he couldn’t make out any words from this distance and with the window closed. There was a quick game of rock, paper, scissors, but Gojyo looked less than pleased to have won. The losers picked up the luggage and all three started walking towards the door.

Hakuryu transformed and took flight to a nearby tree. It had become standard procedure these days to let Hakuryu in through a window after they arrived. Most inns were fine with the tiny creature, but after a few noteworthy problems, it had simply become easier not to ask.

Gojyo held the door while Goku and Hakkai started up the stairs with the luggage and then walked over to where Sanzo was sitting.

“I thought Hakkai was the lucky one. How did you manage to get out of doing any work again?” Sanzo may have been ill, but he still had the strength to bait Gojyo.

Gojyo shook his head and took a good look around the lobby. It was bad enough that he was going to get killed for this, but if there were witnesses, Sanzo would make sure that there was a great deal of suffering first. With no one around, Gojyo seized the opportunity, bent down to quickly pick Sanzo up in his arms, and ran for the stairs.

Sanzo was so shocked by the unexpected action that he didn’t start threatening Gojyo until they were half way up the first flight of steps. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, you idiot?! Put me down right now or I swear I will shoot your sorry ass!”

Gojyo continued up the stairs as fast as he safely could with his obstinate charge. That little rant had taken up another half flight so it wouldn’t be long until he could comply. At this point, the only thing that could save Gojyo was just getting it over with as soon as possible. “Sorry, Sanzo, no can do. We’ll be there in a second so try to relax and enjoy the ride.”

“Enjoy the…” Sanzo stuttered with impotent rage. “I’m going to kill you, you…” Whatever insult Sanzo was gearing up to sling at Gojyo was cut off when the priest suddenly clutched at his heart.

Hakkai had heard the swearing coming from the stairwell and stood with the door of one room open and a path to one of the beds cleared while Goku opened the window for Hakuryu. When the shouting suddenly ceased in mid-curse, Hakkai and Goku exchanged a look.

Gojyo came into view and ran straight for the room. Sanzo was limp in his arms and his forehead was covered with a thin sheen of perspiration. After Gojyo laid Sanzo on the bed, they could also see that the priest’s breathing was shallow and his body was shaking with small tremors. Hakkai touched Sanzo’s forehead to check his temperature and then put two fingers to his neck to check his pulse.

“Goku, please get me a basin of cool water and a washcloth. Gojyo, could you help me get Sanzo out of his clothes?” Hakkai spoke quickly. If the situation had been less serious, both he and Gojyo might have had a nice laugh over the idea of the half-breed getting Sanzo’s clothes off, but, as it was, neither of them noticed.

The robes were quickly removed and Sanzo’s distended abdomen was revealed. Carefully, Gojyo and Hakkai worked Sanzo’s shirt and jeans off his body before covering him back up with a sheet and blanket.

While Goku was safely out of earshot, Hakkai turned to Gojyo. “I think we need to try to find a doctor, Gojyo. His heartbeat is very irregular and whatever this is, it’s beyond my ability to help.”

“Yeah, I’ll go. He can only shoot me once and I’m already on his list today. Stay here with the monkey and do what you can. I’ll be back soon with somebody.”

Gojyo closed the door quietly behind him, but Hakkai could hear the sound of his footfalls rushing down the inn’s stairs.

Fortunately, the inn had bathrooms on each floor, so Goku returned quickly from his errand and sat the items on the nightstand near Sanzo’s head. As Hakkai used the washcloth to wipe at the priest’s forehead and wrists, Goku noticed Sanzo’s clothing on the floor and started to pick it up. With great care, he took each article and folded it precisely before laying it on the second bed near the sleeping dragon. When he picked up Sanzo’s robes, the letter from the desk clerk fell out of the sleeve and landed on the floor.

“What’s this?” Goku asked Hakkai.

“Apparently someone knew that we were coming and left that here to be delivered to Sanzo.”

“But who would know?” Goku persisted as he studied the small envelope.

Hakkai had no good answers to that question, so he kept silent. Goku didn’t appear to need one though, because he walked back over to the empty bed and laid the envelope on top of Sanzo’s clothing before returning to the priest’s side to watch over him.

In the meantime, Gojyo quickly discovered the location of the town’s small clinic and ran to fetch the doctor. When he arrived, however, the building was dark and the door was locked. A small hand-written sign in the window said, ‘Closed due to out of town emergency. All regular appointments will be rescheduled. If you have an emergency, please contact Dr. Taiso.’

Gojyo kicked at the door once in frustration before shouting, “Who the hell is Dr. Taiso and where do I find him.”

Most of the people nearby shied away from his display of violence but one woman walked over and offered to help.

“I can take you to Dr. Taiso’s house if you don’t know the way.”

It was a short walk four blocks from where the clinic had been and Gojyo thanked the woman profusely while he waited for someone to answer the door.

In short order, a small elderly man opened the door and said, “Can I help you?”

Gojyo quickly explained the situation while Dr. Taiso gathered some supplies and threw them in a satchel. Seeing the old man struggle to lift the heavy bag, Gojyo tossed it over his own shoulder and led the way back to the hotel. The old man tried gamely to keep up, but it was difficult. Gojyo wondered if he’d have to carry another person up the stairs today.

In all, it had only been 40 minutes since Gojyo had left before he returned with the doctor, but it felt like hours to all of them. Seeing the doctor’s age and his exhaustion from the trip, Hakkai moved a chair from the small four person table over to Sanzo’s bedside so that he could sit while he examined his patient.

Goku reluctantly left the bed and joined Gojyo and Hakkai across the room to wait. They watched as the doctor checked Sanzo’s vital signs and reflexes. At one point he leaned over and sniffed near Sanzo’s face. When he drew the sheet back and looked at Sanzo’s stomach, he paused before carefully feeling the abdomen and watching the priest’s face for any reaction to his prodding. He gave a quick look to Sanzo’s arms and legs and tested the skin’s elasticity before standing up and smoothing the blankets back into place.

The doctor left his bag by the bed and walked over to take a seat at the table near the three men. “I’d like to ask you boys some questions, if you don’t mind?”

Gojyo and Hakkai sat at the two remaining chairs while Goku settled cross legged on the floor by the doctor’s feet.

“To begin, when was the last time your friend ate?”

“We just ate a couple of hours ago,” Goku answered.

“Your friend’s blood sugar is quite low. I would advise you to get some kind of fruit juice from the bar downstairs and try to give it to him if he’ll take it.”

“I’ll go!” Goku jumped to his feet, eager to do something, anything to help. His inability to end Sanzo’s suffering frustrated him and this was at least progress. He had mixed emotions about leaving the room. He wanted to know what else the doctor might have to say, but also thought they might not want him to know. He knew that Gojyo and Hakkai had been whispering back and forth for days and keeping their suspicions to themselves, but he also knew that they would do everything they could for Sanzo and they would tell him when they knew anything for certain.

After Goku left, the doctor continued his questions. “How long has he been like this?”

“He started showing signs of lethargy and increased appetite about ten days ago,” Hakkai stated. “It hasn’t always been like this. He’s just been getting worse every day.”

“What about his stomach? Has it always been like that or is this recent as well.”

“I believe it’s very recent. We didn’t know about it until we undressed him, but I can tell you that it wasn’t there two weeks ago.” Hakkai was berating himself for having failed to notice until now.

“I knew he was getting a little thick around the middle,” Gojyo added. “But he’s been eating like Goku and those robes of his hide a lot.”

“I see. Can you tell me if he’s eaten anything out of the ordinary or received any sort of insect or animal bite?”

Gojyo and Hakkai exchanged a look. Given the location of the mass and the onset of Sanzo’s symptoms, this had to be related to the dart. The doctor watched the two men and prompted them, “Well?”

“Not an insect bite as such, doctor, but he was,” Hakkai tried to figure out how to describe it, “he was struck with a dart two weeks ago.”

“A dart?” The doctor inquired, puzzled. “What type of dart? Like the sort of thing used in a bar game?”

“No man, like those tranquilizer things they use on animals,” Gojyo explained.

“It had some kind of fluid inside then? Like a hypodermic?” the doctor asked to clarify.

Gojyo looked at Hakkai who had seen it more carefully than he had. “Yes,” Hakkai answered. “I believe that it did.”

“I see. Well then, here’s my best guess, gentleman. I believe your friend has become infected by some kind of parasite. I’ve never seen anything that could grow this rapidly so I can’t swear to it, but he certainly shows the signs of it. Whatever it is, it’s draining all the nutrients from his body to feed itself. Despite eating, he has massive malnutrition and dehydration, his blood sugar and electrolytes are completely drained and his body is shutting down.”

“You mean,” Gojyo stared in shock at the doctor. “You mean that he’s dying?!” This wasn’t possible. Genjo Sanzo may get beaten up, but he never allowed himself to be beaten.

“If we do nothing, yes, I believe he will die. He’s lasted this long by trying to compensate, eat more, but that is obviously not going to work much longer if whatever this is can grow this rapidly. Bed rest and better nutrition will help in the short term, but I would suggest surgery. Unfortunately, the doctor who runs the clinic is out of town and I haven’t done a surgery since I retired.”

Gojyo looked back at the bed and felt his jaw drop. Hakkai leaned forward and put his forehead on his clasped hands, elbows on the table under him. The doctor waited patiently. He had treated many people over the years and was accustomed to the signs of shock their families displayed when they received bad news about a loved one. He didn’t know what the relationship was between these men, but he could tell that they cared very much about one another.

The silence was broken when Goku entered the room carrying a large glass of juice with a straw in it. “Can I give it to him now?” he asked Dr. Taiso.

“Yes, if you can wake him well enough to swallow it the sooner the better, but don’t let him choke on it. Sit him up a bit if you can.”

Goku gently lifted Sanzo and moved the extra pillows behind him. The three men at the table looked on as their friend roused the priest and spoke softly to him, encouraging him to take the juice. The old man smiled at the gentle attentions, but Hakkai gritted his teeth and Gojyo bit his lip. Both of them were trying desperately to hold back tears at the thought of explaining this to Goku.

“Doctor,” Hakkai finally asked when he got himself in check. “I know this is a terrible imposition, but if there’s any way that you could stay here with us, we would gladly get you a room and pay both your fees and expenses. We need to discuss our options amongst ourselves and also with Sanzo if he’s able, but I think we’ll need your help no matter what we decide.”

Dr. Taiso nodded. “I don’t mind at all. I’ll need to go back to my house and gather quite a few more supplies now that I have a better idea what we might need. I’ll also let my housekeeper know that I’m here in case there are any emergencies in town. I may have to leave, you understand, if someone else needs me.”

Gojyo rose and walked to the door. “I’ll take you home, doc and help you get your stuff.”

The doctor stood but waved Gojyo off. “I can get home by myself. If you remember how to get to my place, come by in an hour or two after you boys have had a chance to catch your breath. It will take me a while to get my things and you have a great deal to talk about.”

The voice that came from the bed wasn’t strong but it was very clear. “Yes, we do.”


	4. Chapter 4

Nii returned to his office, popcorn in one hand, soda in the other, and Bunny in his lab coat pocket. He pushed a comfortable rolling chair up to the large monitor and set his soda on the counter. After carefully arranging Bunny on his lap, he picked up the soda and balanced the popcorn on his thigh where he could reach it easily. Turning his full attention to the images on the monitor, he adjusted his glasses and smiled.

“Now we’re ready for the show to begin.”

*****

Once the door of the hotel room closed behind the doctor, Sanzo pushed himself up further on the bed and waited for the other three.

“Sanzo, we didn’t know you were awake.” Hakkai spoke as casually as possible.

“Yeah, I gathered that much.” Sanzo was not only awake; he was also apparently quite cranky.

“You look better than the last time I saw you,” Gojyo remarked. “Not that that would have been tough. You looked bad, man.”

Sanzo did indeed look better than he had an hour earlier. The shaking had stopped and his eyes were a little less sunken. His color, however, was still far too pale.

“So is anybody gonna clue me in on what’s going on?” Goku looked at each of his companions in turn and waited for an explanation.

Hakkai cleared his throat and tried to explain. “Sanzo has an infection of sorts, Goku. The doctor recommended surgery to cut it out but isn’t sure if he is able to do it.”

“Surgery?! They’re not gonna cut his arm or leg off or something are they? Why can’t they just put something on it or give him some of that nasty tasting stuff to drink?”

“No, Goku, they don’t need to cut anything off, but the infection isn’t like a cut, it’s inside him and it’s too large to fix with medicine. What Dr. Taiso is suggesting is cutting Sanzo open and removing the problem; then he’d stitch him back up.” It was too simplistic an explanation but he didn’t want to overwhelm Goku with too much information all at once.

It seemed straightforward enough to Goku which made him wonder what it was that Hakkai wasn’t telling him. “And what happens if Sanzo doesn’t have this surgery?”

“I’ll die,” Sanzo said bluntly. “Quit pussyfooting around, Hakkai. He’s old enough to hear the truth. It’s not as if we don’t wade through death every day on this trip.”

“So…so, you’re gonna have the surgery…right?” Goku did indeed face death everyday, he just didn’t think about Sanzo doing it. He didn’t WANT to think about Sanzo dying. His stomach suddenly felt very ill.

Staring Hakkai directly in the eyes, Sanzo said, “Yes, Goku, I am going to have the surgery.” The steely violet gaze turned to Gojyo before adding, “As soon as possible.”

Hakkai raised his hands in front of him in a gesture of placation. “I didn’t mean that you shouldn’t, Sanzo. I just didn’t want to presume to speak for you, that’s all. I’m certain the doctor and I can figure something out.”

Gojyo sat back in his chair and reached for his cigarettes and lighter. “I don’t see what the big deal is here. How can the surgery be that freakin’ hard? You cut him open, take it out, and heal him up. It’s not like you’ll be digging around trying to find it. The thing is huge, you can’t miss it.”

Goku sat up in his chair, momentarily distracted from his gloomy thoughts. “You’ve seen it? I thought Hakkai said whatever it was, it was inside him and you couldn’t see it.

“Not exactly see the thing itself, Goku, but there is a very large…lump,” Hakkai tried to explain.

Goku looked back to Sanzo and studied his face, arms, and chest where he was uncovered by the blanket. “I don’t see anything.”

“It’s on his gut,” Gojyo offered around the cigarette between his lips just before lighting it.

Sanzo couldn’t stand the look on Goku’s face. He wouldn’t ask outright but the question was right there between them. Everyone else in the room had seen The Thing, why shouldn’t he?

Tired of fighting everything, Sanzo huffed out, “Fine,” before leaning back and pushing the blanket to his hips.

Goku quietly examined Sanzo’s abdomen, eyes darting over every inch of distended skin. “That’s gotta hurt, Sanzo, although it does kinda make you look like a pregnant woman.” The room went silent around Goku who carried on, oblivious to the effect of his statement. “I can see why you’d want to get rid of it right away.” Finally looking up at the others and sensing the complete stillness of the room, Goku asked, “What?”

Gojyo took the cigarette out of his mouth and exhaled a long stream of smoke. “Maybe he is.”

Sanzo’s full force glare burned into Gojyo’s eyes, willing him to shut up, but Gojyo was resolved to speak.

“You said yourself that he was old enough to know you might die, why they hell shouldn’t he be old enough to hear why?” Gojyo was emphatic. It was time for everyone to stop dancing around and face facts, weird as they may be.

“I – am – not – pregnant!” Sanzo spat out. “You idiots are letting your imaginations run wild.”

“Uh, I think I’ve gotta go with Sanzo on this one, Gojyo. I know it looks kinda funny, but even I know that guys can’t get pregnant. Right, Hakkai?”

“Ordinarily I would agree with you, Goku. There’s no natural way for a man to get pregnant, but this may be somewhat different.” The facts and clues had been laid out quite plainly for them and while Hakkai didn’t want to jump to any conclusions, it seemed to be the truth. “The men in the farmhouse that we passed may have been used to create the children that we saw. Certainly the women who were present didn’t seem to have given birth recently enough to have been mother to either of the newborns. If it is possible, it’s likely that whatever was in the dart that hit Sanzo two weeks ago is the same thing that those men were given.”

“So someone did this to Sanzo on purpose?” Goku wasn’t sure he understood everything that Hakkai was saying. It was all happening so quickly and he tried to follow it all. “The same person who hurt the people in the farmhouse?”

“I think so,” Hakkai replied quietly.

“Is that who sent Sanzo the letter?” Goku wondered aloud.

“What letter?” Gojyo asked.

With everything that had happened, Sanzo had forgotten about the letter. He remembered tucking it inside his sleeve, but his robes weren’t visible. “Where’s my robe? The letter is in the sleeve.”

Goku walked back to the unused bed and picked up the letter from the top of the pile. He reached inside Sanzo’s robe and pulled out the case with his glasses as well before returning to his chair at the priest’s side.

The others watched as Sanzo put his glasses on, opened the seal on the letter, and pulled out a single folded sheet of paper. He read to himself, not willing to share the contents yet, apparently. Whatever it was, though, it was upsetting the priest badly and his physical condition was going back to what it had been when he collapsed in Gojyo’s arms. By the time he put the letter and his glasses down, he was visibly shaking and sweating profusely.

Goku handed Sanzo the glass with the remaining juice and urged him to drink it.

Sanzo finished the drink and leaned back on his pillows with his eyes closed. It just wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be done. It had to be some kind of sick joke. He felt nauseous and wondered if he would be able to keep the juice down.

When he opened his eyes, he could see the others watching him. He knew they were dying to know what the letter said but were afraid to ask because of his reaction. Reaching for the washcloth on the nightstand, Sanzo wiped his face and sat back up. It was time to deal with it, ready or not.

“According to this sick fuck, I am pregnant, about four and a half months pregnant. Full gestation for his little ‘gift’ is four weeks.”

Goku stood up and walked over to Gojyo. Grabbing the cigarette out of his mouth, he marched directly to the small table and put it out on the ashtray.

“What the hell, you stupid monkey? I wasn’t done with that.”

“No more smoking,” Goku announced. “Everybody knows you aren’t supposed to smoke around pregnant wom-- uh, people.”

Hakkai smiled at Goku’s actions before he glanced at the sheet of paper on the bed. There was a lot more writing on it than what would be needed to say that and just confirming their suspicions wouldn’t have affected Sanzo that badly. “What else does it say, Sanzo?”

Sanzo glared at Hakkai. At times it was useful having someone so perceptive in their group, but right now it was annoying as hell. There were certain things that he’d rather keep private. “The cells that he used to do this belonged to someone I knew.”

‘Belonged’, ‘knew’; Sanzo only used the past tense. Hakkai got that sick feeling again. The pregnancy itself was only part of the problem. Whoever this person was, he was using their pasts against them again.

“Who is it, Sanzo?” Goku asked.

Sanzo thought about trying to find his fan so that he could smack the monkey on the head and tell him to mind his own business. In the end, he decided that hiding it just gave credence to the ravings of a madman and he handed the sheet of paper to Hakkai.

Hakkai read aloud:  
To Genjo Sanzo,  
Congratulations on the impending birth of your baby boy. You’ll be happy to hear that the child is cloned from Koumyou Sanzo’s DNA. Just think, you have the chance to give life back to your dead master, the master who died to save you.  
It’s a quick pregnancy, only four weeks in all, so you won’t have long to wait. Of course, waiting to full term will probably prove fatal to you, but this is your chance to redeem yourself for Koumyou’s sacrifice.   
The choice is yours, Genjo Sanzo. Which will it be?

Hakkai put the letter back on the bed and fell into deep thought. If someone had done this to him with Kanan…

Hakkai’s thoughts were interrupted by Goku’s voice. “But who is it?”

Shaking his head to clear his thoughts and return to the present, Hakkai answered, “Well, the child is allegedly this Koumyou Sanzo.”

Goku persisted. “No, I mean who did this to Sanzo? Doesn’t he say who he is?”

Sanzo hung his head and chuckled at the irony of Hakkai’s mistake. He had also thought that Goku was asking whose cells were used, but the monkey hadn’t been prying for details, he had just wanted to know who to go pound. In the midst of all this tension, Goku was a blessing. “It doesn’t say, Goku. The idiot drew a little bunny at the bottom instead of signing his name.”

“Are you serious?” Gojyo asked. Both he and Goku leaned forward and looked at the letter themselves, eager to see the art of a madman.

A shiver ran down Hakkai’s spine before he commented, “Well this changes things a great deal, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, man, seriously. You’re gonna want a couple days to think about this. I’m not eager to have a little Sanzo chewing on my ankles or anything, but it’s still your kid.”

“It changes nothing,” Sanzo asserted. “What makes you think I’d want anything to do with some abomination forced on me by this twisted bastard?”

Gojyo froze as he heard echoes in his memory of similar words screamed by a woman he loved more than his own life.

“This…thing should never have come into being. I don’t know what it actually is, but do you really think I’m going to cart it around with us and play daddy to it?”

“You mean, you’d leave it behind here, alone?” Goku’s voice was soft and shaky, his words taking him back to a place he never wanted to see again.

“There won’t be anything to leave. I don’t plan on having this thing at all. I plan on killing it. Hell, I’ll take myself out first before I let this bastard use me as some sort of genetic breeding experiment.”

A flash of Kanan’s face as she held the knife to herself hit Hakkai as he heard Sanzo. Unable to stop himself, he lunged forward, grabbed Sanzo’s wrists and cried out her name, “Kanan!”

In that moment, Genjo Sanzo looked around himself and realized the depth of the evil that had been sent their way. This mind fuck wasn’t meant for him alone; this was acid for everyone’s soul. He was angry. Angry for himself and angry for the friends he had just hurt because of what this bastard had done to him.

Throwing his head back, he shouted his rage to the ceiling. “You sick, twisted, son of a bitch. Did you get what you wanted? Are you happy now?”

*****

Wiping his buttery fingers on his lab coat, Nii picked up Bunny and switched the monitor off before replying, “Yes, I believe that I am.” A smile curling at the corner of his lips, he reached for his soda and drained the last of his drink through the straw with a loud slurp.


	5. Chapter 5

Sanzo’s anger brought home to each of them the sudden realization that they had been used.

Hakkai released his grip on Sanzo’s wrists and slowly backed away. Whoever this was, he knew enough about all of them to have found this common chink in their armor. The adrenaline that had surged through his body was causing him to shake with remembered fear, but also with anger. For himself and for his friends who had been wounded so badly in body and spirit, Hakkai was very, very angry.

The sound of Gojyo’s chair scraping across the floor broke the silence. “Uh, I need some air…and a cigarette…and I need to get the doctor anyway so I’m gonna take off.” Gojyo was still upset but he was also clearly embarrassed.

Sanzo waved a hand at him. Every one of them could use some time to collect themselves after this bombshell and if this was how Gojyo wanted to handle it, it was fine with him. They could all hear the snick of a lighter within seconds of the door closing behind him, and Sanzo wondered idly how much it would cost him to convince the kappa to stand underneath the window and blow a little second hand smoke in his direction. Knowing Goku and Hakkai, they wouldn’t let Sanzo get within ten feet of a cigarette or a beer until this whole nightmare was over. He could gleefully kill the bastard that had done this to him for that alone.

Hearing mention of the doctor reminded Goku of his own chore. “Sorry, Sanzo, I should go get you some more juice and something to eat if you want it.”

“It’s alright, Goku,” Hakkai said as he turned to face the pair, “let me take care of it. I have to go downstairs anyway to make arrangements for the doctor’s room. It’s a simple enough thing for me to arrange a supper to be sent up for all of us once Gojyo and the doctor return.” With his smile firmly back in place, Hakkai once again seemed to be back to normal. “You can entertain Sanzo until we get back,” ‘and keep him away from his cigarettes as well,’ he thought to himself.

Goku sat quietly in his chair even after Hakkai had left the room. Sanzo could feel the fear and guilt streaming through Goku’s head and it had to stop.

“Goku, come here.”

Goku moved slowly to the edge of the bed and sat down. “Do you need something, Sanzo?”

“I might need my fan if you don’t pay attention. I’m not in the mood to explain things and I don’t want to tell you twice. One, this is not your fault. I can take care of myself and this is my problem. If you need to blame anyone,” Sanzo grabbed the letter off the bed and tossed it into Goku’s lap, “blame this idiot. As for what I said, Goku, do I strike you as the kind of person who would do something they didn’t want to? Do something for years that they didn’t want to?”

“Not usually”, Goku answered, “but you have said that you only put up with me to stop the voices in your head.”

“This is not the same thing, Goku.”

Goku sat perfectly still, chin still on his chest, and wouldn’t meet Sanzo’s eyes. The small body next to Sanzo’s gave a single sniffle.

“Damn it, Goku, you may annoy the hell out of me at times, but I chose to let you out of that prison, I chose to let you come back to the temple and move in with me. You have a choice as well. You could walk away at any time. No one is forcing you to stay here with me. Do you understand? This is different.”

Goku finally looked directly at Sanzo for the first time since his mind had wandered back to his mountain prison. “I think so. I guess so. I mean, this weird bunny guy didn’t ask you or anything, he just did this to you. I get why you’re mad and everything. I just can’t help thinking about the baby. What if it really is Koumyou Sanzo?”

“I don’t happen to think that this is a real baby, Goku, but it doesn’t make much of a difference. My master gave up his life to save mine. I didn’t ask him to do it; he did it of his own free will. He would never expect me to throw my life away to bring his back, even if it could happen. It can’t happen, Goku. The dead don’t come back and men don’t have real children in four weeks. Whatever this is, it isn’t Koumyou Sanzo and it isn’t real.”

Goku sat quietly for a long time, biting his lip and wrinkling his brow as he tried to digest everything that Sanzo had said. “This is really complicated stuff, isn’t it, Sanzo?”

“It is, Goku. It’s very complicated. Each person has a choice to make about their life when they reach certain crossroads. You have to live the life that was given to you and you can’t let other people make your decisions for you. No matter how wise someone is, no matter how well intentioned, no one else can know your life, and no one else can live it for you.”

Sanzo felt completely drained. Between his anger and all the talking, he had used up whatever resources he had found from his short rest, and he needed sleep. As his eyes drifted shut and his exhaustion claimed its due, Sanzo felt Goku’s hands on him, gently moving and rearranging him on the bed.

*****

Gojyo smoked one cigarette after another on his way to fetch Dr. Taiso. He knew that it was stupid to compare this situation to his own, but he couldn’t stop thinking about it. Why did their pasts always seem to jump up and bite them in the ass so often?

Gojyo’s mind flickered back to the image of Hakkai’s face as he lunged for Sanzo’s arms. The horror written there and heard so clearly in his voice screamed that Hakkai had to be suffering as well. Even the monkey seemed oddly quiet when he had hurried off to ‘fetch the doctor’, and Sanzo…

Gojyo tried to focus on Sanzo. That was the real problem now, right? They could deal with the other stuff later over a nice pack of smokes and bottle of JD. Pack of smokes, he thought. Gojyo suddenly realized that with Sanzo’s two pack a day habit, he had something he could use to torment the priest until this was all over. Gojyo smiled. It wasn’t nice, but it could be fun.

*****

Hakkai finished his chores quickly. He obtained a single room for the doctor that was right next door to Sanzo’s room and he placed an order for food, a very large order for food. He idly wondered if they would need to bring the table out of the second bedroom to accommodate the food, let alone have a place for everyone to sit. As he reached the bottom of the stairs, though, Hakkai realized that he didn’t feel like going back up yet. It was quiet in the hotel’s lounge and he sat in a comfortable chair with a view of the door. He would wait here for Gojyo and the doctor to return and help him get settled.

It saved time; it was polite; he had the key and could show them the way. Hakkai came up with a million excuses why he should stay downstairs. In the end, he knew the real reason was that he couldn’t face Sanzo yet. Kanan’s face lurked just around corners of his mind on the best of days. With this bringing up all those old memories, it was like a fresh wound again. It wasn’t fair of him to do this to Sanzo right now. The priest needed his support and friendship. Hakkai just needed some time; some time to push the feelings down and force the smile back into place. He wasn’t Cho Gonou anymore, he was Cho Hakkai, and his friends needed him.

*****

Goku watched Sanzo as he slept. The priest was out before Goku had even finished getting him back down onto the bed and was now sleeping soundly. They were safe here. There were no enemies nearby and the evening was quiet, and yet Goku felt uneasy. The sight of Sanzo - of his sun - looking weak and vulnerable turned his world on its edge and gave him a chill of fear that no physical enemy could. He felt insecure and protective all at the same time.

Without thinking, Goku crawled up onto the bed with Sanzo and curled around his form. As he held Sanzo in his arms and breathed in the lingering scent of tobacco from the priest’s hair, Goku felt the knot in his stomach relax a bit. He wouldn’t stay long, he told himself. He just wanted to hold Sanzo for a little while. He was still there when Hakkai and Gojyo walked back into the room an hour later with Dr. Taiso.

 

Hakkai knocked quietly before opening the door. He didn’t hear any voices, so he thought it possible that Sanzo had gone back to sleep. When he stepped inside the room and saw Goku snuggled up behind Sanzo, he turned back to his other companions and put his index finger to his lips. The three men tiptoed into the room and watched the scene on the bed. After the day they had, it was a welcome balm to their hearts.

Behind the other two, Dr. Taiso whispered, “As much as I hate to do it, we really have to wake him up and get him to eat something before we turn in. If he decides to go through with the surgery, we need him stronger than he is now.”

Hakkai nodded and looked at Gojyo, “You get Goku and I’ll go wake Sanzo.”

Gojyo was happy enough not to have to deal with the priest, so he walked around the bed and shook Goku’s arm. “Get up, man. If he catches you like this, you’re doomed,” he whispered emphatically.

Goku’s eyes opened slowly until he saw that he wasn’t alone. Now fully awake, he rolled quickly off the bed and stood up.

Hakkai reached down and gently touched Sanzo’s arm while calling his name. “Sanzo, the doctor is back and the food will be here shortly. Do you think you could get up for a little while?”

Sanzo fought his way out of his sleep-fogged state and nodded. “Grab my robes, would you? I need to get up and I don’t feel like flashing the world.”

Hakkai dutifully passed the garment over to Sanzo and turned away after giving him a hand to rise.

When Sanzo shuffled past the round table and towards the door, Dr. Taiso cleared his voice and asked, “And where do you think you’re going, young man?”

Sanzo wasn’t in the mood. He was tired, hungry, sore, and he needed to take a piss. “I’m going to the john, old man. Do you mind?”

“You most certainly are not.” Dr Taiso rummaged around in one of the bags Gojyo had brought in for him and pulled out a bedpan. “Here.”

Sanzo’s eyes went wide in surprise before they narrowed into his best death glare. “No – way – in – hell!”

“You won’t make it three steps out of this room, let alone to the end of the hall. You aren’t fooling anyone, so sit down and behave.” Dr. Taiso had seen a lot of obstinate patients in his time, and while Sanzo was scary, Taiso had had plenty of years of practice.

Hakkai watched the standoff and thought quickly. “What if someone carried him down the hall? Would that be acceptable?”

The doctor appeared to be thinking the option over, but Sanzo turned his glare onto Hakkai and let him know that he wasn’t impressed with the alternative.

The doctor agreed and Gojyo moved quickly, picking Sanzo up much like he had earlier in the day. Sanzo’s verbal reaction wasn’t much better this time than it had been the first time; he was, however, struggling less.

Gojyo hated to give up his ace in the hole, but he also didn’t want to see the priest have another attack. “It’ll be over before you know it, Sanzo, and I promise not to peek.” Before the priest had time to launch into a tirade over that comment, Gojyo turned them toward the door and whispered in his ear, “Be a good boy and maybe I’ll give you a drag off one of my smokes.”

Hakkai and Goku were stunned when Sanzo stopped cursing. Dr. Taiso didn’t seem to notice or care, however, going over to helpfully open the door for Gojyo to exit with his patient.

In the time Sanzo and Gojyo were gone, the food arrived and Hakkai worked quickly to lay everything out on the table. He did indeed have to send Goku to fetch the other table, but he made it all fit.

As occupied as they were with dinner, no one noticed how long the other two were taking. As soon as they got back, Sanzo popped a garlic-laden potsticker in his mouth and chewed quickly with a wry smile on his face. He was happy from his tiny nicotine fix and the strong seasonings on the potsticker covered his smoker’s breath. Life was good again.

Dinner with Goku always passed quickly and tonight was no exception. However, everyone made sure that Sanzo got his fill, and Goku watched to make sure he didn’t take the last of anything Sanzo might want. It was a lighthearted evening, and there was even laughter when Hakuryu tried to swallow a meat bun whole.

When the food was gone and the dishes cleared away, Dr. Taiso rose and made his way to the door. Sanzo looked like he wanted to say something but Taiso raised a hand to stop him. “We have a lot to talk about, but nothing that can’t wait until morning. Get a good night’s rest and if you need anything, I’m right next door. Good evening, gentlemen.”

Hakkai motioned to Gojyo and they both picked up their packs from the corner of the floor where they had been tossed in the earlier commotion. “We’ll be just across the hall, Sanzo, Goku. Wake me if you need anything.”

As he flipped his hair over his shoulder and out of the way of the pack strap, Gojyo added, “Night, monkey. See ya tomorrow, priest.”

Alone once again, Goku helped Sanzo back to the bed and out of his robe. Slipping between the sheets and lying back on the comfortable bed, Sanzo watched as Goku hung the robe on a hook near the door and took the priest’s other clothes, carefully folded earlier, off the spare bed and packed them away. Taking his own clothes off and tossing them carelessly over a chair, Goku turned back the blanket and sheet of the spare bed and started to crawl inside.

“What are you doing, monkey?” Sanzo asked.

“I’m going to bed, Sanzo. Did you need something?”

“I thought you were going to sleep over here again.”

Goku blushed at the notion that he’d been caught and wondered how much trouble he was in. “I’m sorry, Sanzo, I just…” How could he explain it?

“It’s fine, Goku. Come back over if you want. Just do me a favor and try not to elbow me in the ribs. Okay?”

Goku beamed a smile at Sanzo and hopped into bed with him. He wasn’t in trouble after all. Once again, he arranged himself carefully around Sanzo and watched until the priest fell asleep. “It’s gonna be okay, Sanzo,” he whispered quietly. “Everything’s gonna be okay now.”


	6. Chapter 6

Breakfast the next morning worked out much the same way as dinner had the night before. There were a few tense moments when the doctor tried to keep Sanzo away from his morning coffee, but in the end it was decided that the cigarettes and the booze were enough of a sacrifice and the priest was allowed access to the magical brown liquid.

Once breakfast was over, Dr. Taiso herded the others out of the room and sat down with his patient. “Before I take a look at you today, you wanted to talk to me last night, didn’t you?”

Sanzo sat down on the bed and pulled the letter out of the nightstand. “I happen to think this is all utter crap, but you probably ought to know about it in case it makes any difference.” He wanted a cigarette very badly at that moment and wished he had thought to ask Gojyo for a trip down the hall beforehand.

Taiso sat on the chair next to the bed and read the letter to himself. Aside from raising his eyebrows when he first started, he showed no reaction to the contents. When he finished, he folded the paper and handed it back to Sanzo. Taiso watched Sanzo for a few minutes, taking in his physical condition and the small signs of nervousness.

“I agree with you that it seems far-fetched, but I also think there is some small part of you that’s worried that it might be true. I don’t think you would have shown me the letter otherwise. One way or another, you want to know.”

Sanzo was busted. As much as he had tried to reassure Goku the night before, there was now the nagging worry that he might have been wrong. He kept seeing the children’s bodies as they had found them in the farmhouse. Was it all smoke and mirrors designed to make them believe the ravings of a lunatic, or had this bastard actually figured out how to create something that looked like a human child? Either way, there would be hell to pay when this was all over.

The doctor took Sanzo’s silence to mean he was right and suggested, “Why don’t we just check you out. I didn’t have the time yesterday for a thorough exam since I was more concerned with stabilizing your condition.” Rising from his chair, Dr. Taiso retrieved his bags of equipment, placed them on the spare bed where they would be more at hand and pulled out a simple stethoscope.

Taiso sat on the edge of the bed and started with Sanzo’s pulse. He wanted to get an idea of his heart rate and strength first. Then he pulled the sheet away from Sanzo’s stomach and used the stethoscope. Sanzo jumped a little at the touch of the cold instrument. The doctor smiled and pulled it away. “Sorry, it’s been a while and I keep forgetting to warm the silly thing.” Doctors always said that and they always forgot. It was one of those comforting anomalies of life that distracted people from their real troubles.

Dr. Taiso took his time and placed the instrument over several areas of Sanzo’s abdomen. Periodically, he would take Sanzo’s pulse for reference before returning to his investigation. He spent fifteen minutes checking and rechecking things and occasionally pausing to make notations in a notebook that he retrieved from one of the bags. Taiso didn’t speak to the priest as he went about his business, and while Sanzo found the lack of feedback annoying, he did his best to lie quietly and wait for the news.

Pausing in his work, Taiso stood up, cracked his back, took off his stethoscope, and returned it to his bag before leaving the room. He returned quickly with Gojyo in tow. “I’m going to need to do a lot of poking and prodding, I’m afraid. I expect it will be somewhat painful and definitely uncomfortable. You’ll be happier if all this probing isn’t pushing on a full bladder.” Looking over at Gojyo, the doctor scolded, “Well, what are you waiting for, an invitation? Pick him up and get going.”

Too dumbfounded at the doctor’s behavior to comment, Gojyo picked up his charge and left the room. The Sanzo party was getting a first hand crash course into the inner workings of the medical profession. If they thought that Hakkai could be pushy, they were suddenly aware that their companion was a rank amateur in the field of convalescent bullying.

Once Gojyo had returned his patient and left the room again, the doctor continued his exam. Carefully feeling all around the abdomen, he would stop at intervals and push as if feeling for something in particular. It was as painful as the doctor promised, but Sanzo bit down and held his voice in check. Fortunately, Taiso worked efficiently and kept this portion of the exam short.

As he re-covered Sanzo with the blanket, he asked, “Do you want me to bring the others in, or would you like to keep this between us?”

“I take it, it’s not good news.” Sanzo said flatly.

The doctor sat heavily in the chair, finally looking his age for the first time that morning. “It depends what you might have been hoping for, but in this case, I would guess that no, it isn’t really good news.”

Dr. Taiso picked up his notebook and made a few more notations before explaining things to Sanzo as best he could. “Understand; this is something I don’t have any experience with. Hell, I doubt anyone has any experience with something like this, but whatever you’ve got in there is definitely shaped like a five month old human child. This is in no way like a normal pregnancy. There’s no amniotic sac and no placenta which means that this…” he wondered just how to refer to his patient’s passenger without causing offense.

“This fetus must be tapping directly into your circulatory system for all its life support. I’m guessing that’s part of why you’ve gotten so ill so quickly. In addition to it taking all of its nourishment from you, it’s overworking your kidneys and liver trying to remove toxins from your joint blood stream. I can’t conclusively detect a separate heart beat, but I imagine that could be expected if there was no buffer in the circulation. If your heart and its were not synchronized, it would generate an enormous pressure differential that could lead to a heart attack. If you had been exerting yourself at the time, that may have been the cause for your episode last evening.”

Sanzo recalled how hard his heart had been beating after Gojyo picked him up. It wasn’t long after that that he felt the pain in his chest and passed out. “Not exertion as such, but my heart was racing at the time.”

“After having been slow?” Dr. Taiso wanted to be clear that the scenario matched up with his theory.

“Yes. I had been resting and then I became…upset.”

The doctor sighed heavily. Type A patients were such a nuisance. “You realize of course that you are going to have to keep your temper in check and your stress level low until this is over, right?”

Sanzo nodded his head. Gojyo was an idiot, but it wasn’t worth dying to remind him of it on a regular basis.

“Very well. I’m afraid that’s all the information I can really give you at this point. Ideally, I would like to recommend to you that you wait for Dr. Ven to return to town with her nurse. I haven’t done surgery in years and I have no nursing assistant of my own. However, she’s been gone several weeks now and we haven’t heard any definite word from her as to when she’ll be back. Still, if you would prefer to wait for someone more qualified, I would certainly understand”

Sanzo got the nasty feeling that Dr. Ven and her nurse might never be returning to this town and shook his head to show that he wanted to move forward with Dr. Taiso. “So what are our options?”

Dr. Taiso nodded. He had expected Sanzo to want a definite plan and he couldn’t blame him. The town was already worried and talking about Dr. Ven. It was a five day trip out to the Goro farmhouse, but they should definitely have heard something from the two women by now. Taiso wondered if he would have to take over the clinic once again.

“We realistically have only one option and that is surgery. My advice is to conduct it sometime between three and eight days from now.”

“Explain.”

“If you insist, I’ll do it now, but it will be hard on both of us. I need time to find and train an assistant and I’d like you to be more stable before we make the attempt. To do that, I think we could both use about three days.”

“You said three to eight days.”

“If you show significant improvement with the treatments I have planned and can tolerate the delay, then the longer we use them, the better your chances will be. I’m not sure if this matters to you, but if this is a human child, it would be far enough along at that point to have a chance as well. The letter you showed me indicated that four weeks should be full-term. I said eight days rather than two weeks because, I don’t believe it will be possible to wait any longer than that. I think that in about nine days, compression from the fetus will begin to damage your internal organs. The male body just isn’t built for something like this and even a woman’s body uses that nine months to adapt itself to the process. This is not an easy thing for the body to do under the best of circumstances.”

The seconds ticked away and Dr. Taiso watched Sanzo as he sat lost in thought. “You don’t have to decide right this second, son. As I said, I need to try to track down an assistant. I don’t suppose any of your friends has any sort of medical background?”

“Hakkai,” Sanzo answered absently.

When no other information was forthcoming, the doctor spoke again. “Would you like me to explain this to them for you? Maybe you want to talk to them before you decide?”

There was no response at all this time. Eventually, Dr. Taiso stood up, put his notebook away, and quietly left the room.

Sanzo stretched out on the bed and put his arm over his eyes. He needed time. He needed to decide how to handle this before he saw the others. This was his problem and he would handle it on his own. He wasn’t going to let this sick bastard mess with anyone else’s head more than he already had.

The doctor exited the room and closed the door behind him. Hakkai, Gojyo and Goku had been pacing the hallway outside the room and they turned as they heard the door. “I know you have a lot of questions, boys and I wish I could give you some answers, but they’re going to have to come from that one.” With a gesture of his hand, he indicated Sanzo in the room behind him. “Now if you want to know what you can do to help, that I’ll be glad to talk about.” Taiso didn’t bother waiting for an answer to that rhetorical question. He knew that these three would do anything they could to help their friend. The bond between them was obvious and strong. “Why don’t we go across the hall and talk in your room?”

Once inside the room and with more privacy, he turned first to Goku and Gojyo. “You two are going to be responsible for making sure he eats and drinks. He’s going to be on a wide variety of herbal medications and nutritional supplements but it’s also very important to make sure he gets a lot of water.” Turning to Gojyo he said, “If you aren’t carrying him down the hall at least eight times a day, then you boys are slacking. Oh,” he paused and turned a scathing look in Gojyo’s direction. “And I’ll thank you to stop sneaking cigarettes to my patient. Got it?” The scent of tobacco was so strong on both of them when they came back from the bathroom that it was obvious to the doctor that they’d been smoking.

“Damn it, water sprite! I told you about the cigarettes.” Goku was livid, but tried to keep his voice down to a harsh whisper so as not to disturb the priest across the hall.

“Well, Gojyo,” Hakkai said very calmly and with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes, “it appears as though we need to have a little talk.”

Gojyo muttered a quiet, “Yes, sir,” at the doctor and tried to avoid the looks from Hakkai and Goku.

Turning back to Goku, Taiso spoke much softer when he said, “You have a way with that one. Your second job is to keep him calm and entertained. He’s going to be very uncomfortable physically and I suspect he’s not one for sitting around so this will be tough for him mentally as well. Can you do that for me?”

“Are we allowed to play mahjongg with him and bring him newspapers?”

“Yes, son, that’s fine, as long as he isn’t a sore loser.” Dr. Taiso was half joking when he spoke, but then quickly realized that it might well be the truth. “Keep him calm, keep him in bed and make sure he gets rest when he’s tired.”

“You,” Taiso turned to face Hakkai, “are going to get a crash course in surgery and herbal medicine. I’ll need your help since I have no nurse to assist me and if you can help with the elixirs as well, I would appreciate it.”

“Of course, doctor,” Hakkai replied smoothly, “I’ll be glad to do what I can.”

“Alright then, if everyone knows what to do, let’s get to work.”

Dr. Taiso’s objective was two fold. These were things that all needed to be done, that was true, but it also gave Sanzo a little more time to get his thoughts together and distracted the others from their worry. Giving direction to his ‘staff’ also helped the doctor himself. He was in no way certain that he could pull this off and he was distracting himself from the technical challenges he was facing as much as helping anyone else. Privately, he hoped that Sanzo could hold out and give him that week. He could use the time to formulate a plan for how to conduct the surgery and also to reacquaint himself with skills that had gone long unused.

Goku left Sanzo alone for about an hour while he and Gojyo did some shopping and picked up magazines, newspapers, and books. They looked for anything they thought Sanzo might enjoy and that would distract him from both the lack of nicotine and alcohol as well as his impending surgery.

Gojyo helped Goku carry the purchases back to the room and then took him aside and whispered, “I’m gonna go see if Hakkai and the doc need any help. Sanzo’s being a little too quiet and when he gets like that too many people is usually a bad thing.”

Goku nodded. He wasn’t even sure that Sanzo would let him stay in the room, but it might be easier with only one of them at a time until he felt better. Tentatively, Goku approached the bed and tried to get the priest’s attention. “Sanzo? It’s a nice day outside. If you want, I could open the windows and let some fresh air in.”

Only half hearing Goku’s question, Sanzo nodded. It really didn’t matter to him one way or another.

Goku opened the shutters and let the sun and fresh air stream into the room. Maybe if the room wasn’t so gloomy, Sanzo would be able to cheer up. He bustled around the room opening the bags and putting some of the newspapers and books on the nightstand where they would be near at hand. “Oops,” he suddenly said, “I gotta run downstairs for something, Sanzo. I’ll be right back, okay?”

Sanzo took a deep breath of the fresh air and finally turned his head to see the open windows. “Fine,” he said quietly.

Goku smiled and left the room. Sanzo was up to one word answers instead of nods. That was a very good sign. Sanzo just needed a little more time, that’s all. Everything was going to be fine. Goku would make very sure of that.

Goku quickly returned to the room carrying a large tray. He had a small bowl of fresh fruits, two ceramic pitchers, one each of water and juice, two glasses, and a small jar. Setting his burden on the table, he poured a glass of each of the liquids and left both of them on the nightstand.

Sanzo was glancing over the titles of the books stacked to the side when Goku arrived. Goku and Gojyo meant well, but none of the books really captured his interest. Maybe he would take a look at the newspapers. “Goku, do you know where my glasses are?”

“Sure, Sanzo.” Goku quickly located his eyeglasses and handed them to the priest with a cheerful grin. ‘Whole sentences now’, he thought, and Goku could hardly contain his happiness. “I have one more surprise for you, Sanzo.” Returning to the table, he poured a small amount of water into the tall, thin jar and then inserted a single, small, red flower. He turned around and held it out in front of him like a prize before placing it, very precisely, right in the center of the nightstand. “Do ya like it?”

Sanzo stared at the flower. Why did this feel so familiar? Why did something as small and fragile as a flower seem so compelling? Why did his heart feel better when he saw it in Goku’s hands? He wanted to deny it. He wanted to complain that it took up space, but instead simply found himself nodding as he fumbled with his glasses and newspaper.

Goku watched Sanzo take up the paper and hide himself behind it. Back to the quiet gestures instead of speech, he wasn’t sure whether or not he might have made a mistake. He needn’t have worried though. While Sanzo was indeed still brooding, now his mind was on vague memories of Goku and flowers instead of his current situation and that was a definite improvement.


	7. Chapter 7

For the next five days, Sanzo showed remarkable physical improvement. He still spent most of his time in bed or seated at the table, but the doctor began allowing him to make the trip down the hall to the restroom on his own feet, provided someone walked behind him. On the sixth day, things began to change.

Sanzo was still eating well, but was no longer ravenous the way he had been before the treatments had begun. When he ate a little less for breakfast that day, no one really noticed. He took his medication and drank the one cup of coffee that the doctor allowed him and settled in to read the newspaper.

Sanzo took a long nap after he finished the paper and didn’t get up until it was nearly time for lunch. Goku brought him his usual medications and some juice to clear the taste out of his mouth. It was foul tasting stuff, but he couldn’t deny that he felt much better as a result of it.

When the food arrived, Hakkai bustled about setting up the table as usual. It had begun to seem quite normal living like this after a week together in this inn and with so much routine. The doctor in particular was happy with the arrangement. After years of retirement, he had grown lonely without his patients. It never occurred to him how much of his social life had been tied together with his job until he gave it up.

Sanzo sat at the table and watched his companions laugh and eat. The smell of the food was unappetizing suddenly, but he didn’t want the others to fuss so he chose a few things and forced himself to eat. It was just the taste of the medicine still bothering him, he reasoned. Goku had brought a milder juice that morning and the taste of the tonic had lingered.

Gojyo pushed his chair back, “Be back in a few guys; need to hit the restroom.”

Hakkai was puttering and stacking the empty dishes while Goku cleaned up the leftovers. “That’s fine. I can get this if you could help with the table when you get back?”

“Yeah, man. No sweat,” Gojyo answered as he exited.

Sanzo’s stomach still refused to settle, so he moved over to the side of the room by the window and perched on the sill. The warm sun felt good on his face and the fresh air did seem to help. Abruptly, the scent of the air changed and cigarette smoke filtered in the window. At one time, he had joked with himself that he would ask Gojyo to stand under his window and smoke because he knew the other three would cut off his access to cigarettes. Now though, the smell clung to his nostrils and turned his stomach.

Taking a deep breath through his mouth to avoid the smell, Sanzo rose from his window seat and walked to the door. “I’ll be down the hall.”

“If you’ll give me just a moment, Sanzo, I’ll walk down with you,” Hakkai offered.

“Gojyo’s already there, he can walk back with me when I’m done.” Sanzo didn’t want to wait for Hakkai, so he scooted out the door quickly.

As he entered the bathroom, he realized that he was quite alone. There was no time to wonder about Gojyo or to return to the room, however. Once inside, his stomach protested violently and he ran to the nearest toilet. He hadn’t eaten much, but the dry heaves when he was finished were enough to keep him in place on the floor in front of the basin. He couldn’t get up and he couldn’t leave.

When Gojyo returned to the room alone, Hakkai asked, “Where’s Sanzo?”

“Whaddya mean? I left him here with you guys.”

“But he…” Hakkai sniffed. The smell of fresh cigarette smoke clung to Gojyo’s clothing. “Were you smoking in the bathroom again?”

“I am not sneaking him smokes, Hakkai. I went outside to grab a cig of my own.” Gojyo was indignant. He was trying to be kind and smoke where it wouldn’t bother Sanzo and he was still catching grief. “Don’t tell me you expect me not to smoke it all. He’s the one knocked up, not me.”

The furor had gotten Goku’s attention and he grabbed Gojyo’s sleeve. “Sanzo said he was going to the bathroom and you would walk him back. Why the hell would you leave him there to go get a cigarette?”

“He’s at the bathroom. Shit! I didn’t know, Goku. I didn’t actually go there. I just said that to be kind to the pissy bastard and not remind him that he couldn’t smoke.”

Hakkai spoke quickly as he reached for the door, “While I can appreciate the sentiment, Gojyo, someone really should check to make sure he’s okay.”

Hakkai may have intended for Gojyo to take the hint or that he would check himself, but it was Goku who went flying out the door and down the hallway. By the time he arrived, Sanzo was passed out on the floor, a small trickle of blood staining the corner of his mouth.

When Sanzo awoke, he was lying in his bed and someone had undressed him and cleaned him up. Looking around the room, he saw four anxious faces turned his way. He saw the doctor approaching the bed and knew before the man spoke that his long wait was over.

“It’s time, son.”

Sanzo closed his eyes again. Those were such simple words to describe something that had turned his world on its head. He would have to deal with it no matter what happened, but at least he would finally have some answers.

After Sanzo opened his eyes again, Dr. Taiso continued, “It will take me about an hour to set things up in here with Hakkai. Until then, you try to rest quietly; alright?”

Sanzo nodded and watched Taiso and Hakkai leave the room. Turning back, he looked at Goku pacing by the window and Gojyo leaning against a wall.

“I’m sorry, dude. I had no idea you were going…” Gojyo started to apologize, but Sanzo cut him off with a wave of his hand.

“Forget it.” Sanzo’s voice was scratchy from the acid in his throat, but he spoke clearly enough to be understood. “Not your fault. This was going to happen today no matter what.”

Gojyo nodded before straightening up. “I gotta help them with the tables and junk. You gonna be okay here with Goku?”

“Yeah, fine. Get moving. The sooner we get started, the sooner it’ll all be over.” Sanzo tried to sound indifferent to the situation, but the longer he was awake, the more anxious he was to get it over with.

Gojyo grabbed the large table and started to move for the door. Goku stopped pacing long enough to open the door for him and close it behind once they had maneuvered the furniture beyond the threshold.

Goku sat quietly next to Sanzo and they watched as the other three men cleared the extra furniture from the room and brought all the equipment in. There was a long narrow folding table set up in place of the dining tables and a pair of wooden stands.

The doctor knew that the lighting in the room was going to be inadequate so early on he had assigned Gojyo the task of rigging something for him. What Gojyo came up with was a pair of high powered, battery run flashlights and adjustable stands so they could be positioned without anyone needing to hold them. He was rather proud of his invention and slightly put out when Taiso pronounced them adequate and then sent him to buy more batteries.

The men worked quickly and were completed with their task in just less than the doctor’s promised hour. Goku’s eyes went wide as he took in the intimidating set-up. There was a great deal of equipment and an even larger amount of towels, sheets, and gauze. The stark reality that Sanzo was truly about to be cut open finally came crashing down around him. Goku hadn’t realized that he had been shaking until he felt a hand holding his and looked down to see Sanzo gripping it tightly.

“It’s okay,” Sanzo whispered quietly.

Hakkai approached the bed and held a towel in front of him. “Sanzo, I’m afraid you’ll have to remove the rest of your clothing for this.”

Sanzo gritted his teeth and snatched the towel. The rest of his clothing entailed nothing more than underwear and Hakkai knew that perfectly well. It wasn’t that he was angry at Hakkai, it was a perfectly reasonable thing to expect before a surgery like this, and Hakkai’s manner of speaking was intended to make him feel better. It was simply another indignity in a long line of dents to his ego.

To make matters worse, Sanzo found that he couldn’t shift himself on the bed without intense pain. It felt as though someone had punched him hard enough to break a rib.

Goku saw the grimace and pulled down the bed sheet. Taking the towel out of Sanzo’s hands, he covered the priest and reached underneath the towel. “Just hold the towel, Sanzo, and let me help. Okay?”

Not leaving him time to debate the issue in his mind, Goku grabbed the top of the elastic band and carefully but quickly eased the underwear down Sanzo’s legs.

Goku then moved back to the side of the bed and placed one arm under Sanzo’s chest and the other under his legs. “Hang onto my neck if you can,” he directed before lifting the priest and carrying him to the table.

Once Sanzo was in place, Dr. Taiso gave all of them some final instructions. “Hakkai will be helping me with the surgery itself, but I’ll need you other two to help as well. Goku, you’ll be sitting at the head of the table here with Sanzo. I need you to watch his breathing and check his pulse periodically. Let me know if there’s any kind of change or if he starts to look as though he’s in pain. Gojyo, we’ll have our hands full with Sanzo, so when the baby is removed, I’ll be handing it off to you. You’ll have to take care of it until I can get free.”

Once both men agreed, the doctor turned back to look at his patient. “I’m hoping this will go quickly, Sanzo, but I won’t know until I get in there. Are you ready?”

Sanzo had a host of answers he would have liked to choose from, but instead he just said, “Yes.”

Dr. Taiso and his assistant began by carefully rolling Sanzo onto his side and using a spinal block to numb the lower half of his body. When they were satisfied with the results, Taiso took a deep breath and made the first small incision.

Intellectually, the doctor knew that this was no normal pregnancy, and yet he was approaching the surgery the same way he would any cesarean section. Lacking any real data or experience, it was the logical thing to do. What the doctor saw when he looked inside let him know that things would not be going according to plan.

“Gojyo? Would you please go downstairs and see if you can find a bar stool for me? Nothing too high, you understand, just something about the height of where I am when I’m standing.” Once Gojyo left on his errand, the doctor looked up at his patient. “Sanzo? Everything all right up there?”

“Shouldn’t that be my line?” Sanzo asked sarcastically.

“This is going to take a good bit longer than I thought, my boy. Just lie back and try to relax as best you can. Let me know if you start to feel ill or can sense any pain.”

As Sanzo closed his eyes, Dr. Taiso asked Hakkai to retract the skin while he lengthened the incision. Once he was finished and Hakkai adjusted the lighting, they were able to see what they were up against. Instead of having a single umbilical cord attached between mother and child, there was a web of a hundred blood vessels leading between Sanzo and the fetus. It had grown and drawn a new blood supply in much the same way that a cancer would reach out and demand more nourishment for itself. The delicate process of untangling the two bodies would take hours.

As the time dragged on, Goku watched Sanzo’s face carefully. The priest was lying very still and with his eyes closed. Thinking he was asleep, Goku reached forward with his free hand and pushed some of the soft, blond hair away from Sanzo’s face. When Sanzo didn’t respond, Goku gave into temptation and continued to pat the hair down and run his hand over it in much the same way he would pet a cat. It didn’t seem to be bothering Sanzo and made him feel more as though he was actually doing something. He stopped periodically and checked Sanzo’s pulse, but he continued to return his hand to the priest’s face and hair in the times between. The wait and wonder was making him anxious and the feel of Sanzo, soft and warm under his hand, was soothing.

Not knowing the limits of Hakkai’s healing power, the doctor started with the largest veins and arteries first and worked his way to the smaller vessels as time progressed. At the three hour mark, Hakkai was beginning to show the strain. The healing only involved small bits of chi on a tiny level, but it was precise work and there was a great deal of it. When they neared the end, Dr. Taiso stood up and kicked the stool in Hakkai’s direction. “Sit down before you fall down, son. I’m still going to need you in a little bit and I can’t have you passing out on me. Take a break for a while if you need it.”

Hakkai didn’t argue, he simply sat down and took a deep breath. Taiso took advantage of the break to examine the progress and determine how much more work was yet to be finished. With a little more room, he could now see that two of Sanzo’s ribs had fractured due to the compression. Had they waited much longer, one of them might have punctured a vital organ.

“Sanzo?”

“Yes.” The voice under Goku’s hand was loud and clear when it answered the doctor and Goku jumped a little on his chair.

“I think we’re nearly finished, probably about a half hour or so. How are you doing?”

“Fine,” Sanzo answered the doctor. Opening his eyes and looking at Goku, he continued, “Goku is taking very good care of me.”

Goku beamed a smile at Sanzo, happy at the thought that he had helped in some small way, and returned to his duties.

Twenty minutes later, Dr. Taiso called for Gojyo and handed off a small, red bundle. Wrapping it up in towels, Gojyo took the child and went to sit across the room in a dark corner.

Hakkai took care of Sanzo’s ribs while Taiso addressed the remaining bleeding and prepared to stitch up the incision. As he started the sewing, he noticed that Sanzo was beginning to flinch. The spinal block was wearing off.

“Goku?”

“Yes, Dr. Taiso?”

“Do you see that vial on the table behind you? The one with the whitish liquid inside?” The doctor had laid out some strong pain medicine so that it was handy if needed.

Goku let go of Sanzo’s hand and crossed to the table. Picking up the small vial, he asked, “This one?”

“Yes, that’s the one. Could you please tip Sanzo’s head up and help him to drink it? The whole thing, please.”

Goku walked back to the table and uncorked the vial. He held Sanzo’s head up and poured the thick contents into the priest’s mouth. It must have tasted as bad as it looked, because Sanzo looked very unhappy and asked for water after he swallowed the medicine.

Goku looked at Taiso as if to ask for his permission. When the doctor nodded, Goku fetched a small glass of water and helped Sanzo to drink that as well.

Within minutes, Sanzo felt his arms growing heavy and it became harder and harder to keep his eyes open. He could hear that someone was speaking to him, asking him a question, but he couldn’t answer. As he closed his eyes and began to lose his battle to stay awake, one thought occurred to him very clearly. He had heard the voices of everyone else in the room that evening, but he had never heard a sound from the child.


	8. Chapter 8

Dr. Taiso finished the last stitch on Sanzo’s abdomen. It was an enormous opening and would need Hakkai’s attention later, but not today. A glance to the left showed that Hakkai was barely keeping his seat on the stool. The amount of energy he had expended healing was too great. The sutures were sufficient on their own, but with Hakkai’s help Sanzo could be healed in days instead of weeks. The doctor would keep Sanzo in bed for two days and then let Hakkai try if he felt he was up to it.

Once Dr. Taiso was finished with Sanzo, he covered him with a sheet and turned to his newest patient. Though the physician was exhausted, there was still work to be done. “I can take the baby now, Gojyo. Why don’t you see about getting this one,” he jerked his head back to indicate Hakkai, “into a bed across the hall before he falls asleep on that stool.”

Gojyo looked past the doctor and saw Hakkai, eyes closed and swaying unsteadily on his perch. “Will do.” He walked over to Hakkai and grinned at his roommate a little just before picking him up. “Do you want me to bring anything back for you?” he asked Dr. Taiso.

“Just yourself. I’ll need your help to get Sanzo back into bed. It’s a two person job to do it without overly stressing his stitches and I’d be no good trying to help Goku.” The doctor smiled as he spoke, as though he was laughing off his age and weakness, but he looked exhausted. It had been a long day for all of them and even though the sun was only just sinking on the horizon, they would all likely be asleep soon.

While Goku kept an eye on Sanzo, Dr. Taiso examined the child. What he held appeared to be a normal human male child, but with several important differences. The lack of umbilical cord meant there would never be a conventional bellybutton. On the other hand, there were a hundred small dimples where the arteries and veins had tapped into Sanzo’s circulatory system.

Ten fingers, ten toes, two arms, legs, ears and eyes, average length and weight, it all made such a normal picture. Then you realized that those eyes were already open and they moved without seeming to see, the mouth opened but no sound ever came out, and while there was response to stimulus, it looked more pain response than awareness. Also, the infant’s core body temperature was too high and his heart rate was much too fast. If this was normal, then the baby’s metabolism was far different than that of a regular human infant.

Despite any earlier misgivings, Taiso wasn’t afraid of the newborn boy, but he was afraid for it. Sanzo had acted as though this would be some kind of monster. The doctor became more and more convinced as he took stock of the child’s state that it was just another victim of the real monster.

Dr. Taiso finished the last of his notations from the exam and noticed that Gojyo had been behind him, watching over him for some time.

“Is it okay?” Gojyo finally asked, quietly.

The doctor noticed that Goku was facing him as well; they were all concerned. Were they concerned for the child or about it? “It certainly isn’t what I’m used to seeing after a delivery, but that doesn’t mean much in this case.”

“So, it’s not human?” Goku’s curiosity finally prompted him to ask.

“He looks like a typical human infant, Goku, but there are some things that are either wrong with him, or that are vastly different from a normal human. I’ll keep an eye on him tonight and do what I can.”

“Uh-uh, no way. Sanzo would never forgive us if we left you alone with him, doc.” Gojyo’s voice was firm. “Can’t you just tell me what to do for him? I’ll keep him in with me and Hakkai tonight.”

“While I’m touched by your concern, son, I really don’t think that’s a good idea. I can’t tell you how to take care of a baby in five minutes and I don’t think there’s anything to be concerned about anyway. He looks perfectly harmless.”

“A lot of things ‘look’ harmless, doc, and you look like you’re about as tired as Hakkai. You won’t be doing much watching either. How about a compromise? You stay in the room with us this evening. You and Genjo junior there can have the second bed while I keep watch.”

Too tired to argue, Taiso picked up the child and had Gojyo and Goku put Sanzo back to bed. It was a delicate process to lift him carefully by the sheet under him and not jostle him too much, but they managed. Leaving Goku in charge with strict orders to come get him if he was needed, the doctor gathered a few things from his room and went to spend the night with Gojyo and Hakkai.

The first order of business was to clean the child up a bit more and see if it would take nourishment. The bath was kept short. Every touch from the soft washcloth looked like agony to the poor creature. Feeding didn’t seem to go much better. No matter which of them held the child, or how they rocked it or spoke, nothing could get the boy to take any of the formulas that the doctor prepared. In the end, they decided to let it sleep and see if they would have any more success come the dawn.

Gojyo stayed awake as long as he could and woke the doctor when he couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer. The doctor sat up and began to examine the child and Gojyo flopped on the bed next to Hakkai. The bed was warm from Hakkai’s body heat and Gojyo was out quickly.

The doctor did a cursory exam, but the child was sleeping peacefully and he didn’t want to disturb the boy after such a rough night. There was something about his appearance that was bothering him, but Dr. Taiso couldn’t put his finger on what it might be. Deciding that whatever it was it could wait, he lay back down next to the child and went back to sleep. Tomorrow was soon enough for troubles.

Hakkai was overly warm when he awoke and blinked his eyes at the full light of day. Lying still on the bed, he took a moment shake the disorientation that comes after a deep sleep. The last thing he remembered was helping the doctor to finish Sanzo’s surgery, but not how he got to sleep. Gojyo must have dragged him to bed at some point, he thought. Hakkai tried to stretch and roll over and realized that he was pinned to the bed, pinned by something warm. Turning his head to look over his shoulder, he saw Gojyo snuggled up behind him, one arm over him and holding Hakkai in place.

The mantra began again. There’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for this. Something happened to the other bed and Gojyo HAD to sleep here. After all, the man was an incorrigible flirt. Of course he would reach out and grab any body he found himself sleeping with. It didn’t mean anything. It didn’t mean anything at all. A sudden flash of realization came to Hakkai. Gojyo might also try other things in his sleep if he didn’t know who he was with. A light sweat beaded Hakkai’s upper lip and he rolled in Gojyo’s direction since he couldn’t roll away. He needed to wake Gojyo up so that he could…find out? So he could get away?

“Gojyo? Gojyo? Wake up.” Hakkai wasn’t sure why he was whispering in his own room, but it seemed appropriate.

“Hmm? What? Oh, mornin’, Hakkai.” Gojyo mumbled as he cracked his eyes open and saw Hakkai but he didn’t shift his arm. Instead, he leaned forward and placed a small kiss on the tip of Hakkai’s nose. “Izzit time to get up?”

Hakkai’s eyes opened wide. “Y-y-yes, it is.” Body suddenly rigid, Hakkai waited for Gojyo to release him and rolled away quickly. In his agitated state, it took a few moments before he realized that the other bed was indeed occupied and they were not alone in the room. “Dr. Taiso?”

At the sound of Hakkai’s voice, the doctor immediately opened his eyes and quickly looked for his patient. Fearing that there was something amiss, Dr. Taiso’s eyes fixed on the child and his jaw fell open at the sight. He didn’t hear when Hakkai called his name a second time.

Hakkai reached back and tugged at Gojyo’s arm. “Something’s wrong.”

Both men crossed the room and looked down at the infant that had come out of their friend only the day before. What they saw was much larger than they expected.

“What the hell?” Gojyo may have spoken crudely, but it was definitely the thought on everyone’s mind.

The doctor reached out to retrieve his bags and notebook and carefully re-examined the child, stopping to check his watch and shake his head twice. When he finished, he looked at the others in astonishment and reported his findings. “Unless I’m going senile and can no longer read a tape measure correctly, the boy has grown eight inches in the eighteen hours since the surgery.”

“How is that possible?” It wasn’t that Hakkai doubted the doctor’s findings. They could all see that the child had grown and developed overnight, but it defied knowledge.

“I don’t know. What I do know is that the child hasn’t had anything to eat since the surgery. That means he’s doing all of this with only his own body reserves. I don’t know how he’s done it to this point, but I don’t think he can last for long doing that. I’m going to need to force feed him somehow. Hakkai, can you give me a hand?”

“Of course,” he answered. “Gojyo, will you be alright here?”

Turning to Hakkai he answered, “Yeah, I’ll be fine with junior until you get back. Get going already.”

No one was sure what it was that Sanzo had given birth to, but they all seemed determined to do what they could to save it. It looked far too human for their instincts to let them do anything else.

Hakkai and the doctor returned an hour later burdened with several bottles, a length of tubing, and a strangely shaped metal instrument.

“Gojyo, could you go back over to Sanzo’s room and retrieve those stands you built? I’m going to need the lights again.”

Gojyo was half way out the door and across the hall before the doctor finished speaking and returned quickly with the equipment. When they saw the angle he’d be working at, Hakkai removed one of the flashlights from where it was attached and knelt behind Taiso.

The two men watched as the doctor inserted the device into the boy’s mouth. He worked quickly and inserted the tubing before retracting the instrument and dropping it in a small tray by the bed. He placed a small funnel over the end of the tubing and poured vial after vial into the opening. As he finished with each one, Dr. Taiso would stop to check the child’s stomach by palpation and sound. When he was satisfied, he poured a small amount of water into the tube and then carefully pulled the tubing out, placing it in the bedside tray.

With nothing left to do but wait and watch, Dr. Taiso sighed heavily and dropped his head into his hands.

“Doc? You okay?” Gojyo asked.

Dr. Taiso took a deep breath, forced his hands away from his head, and sat up. “I’m fine, Gojyo. I’m just frustrated with not knowing what to do. Doctors aren’t exactly used to being at a loss. We tend to think we know everything and it annoys us when we don’t.” There was a fake smile covering the strained expression. He was worried. “Actually, I do have an idea of what needs to be done; I’m just not sure it will be enough. If I do it any faster though, well, that could be just as bad as doing nothing.” Dr. Taiso paused to shake his head and chuckled softly. “Sorry, that probably doesn’t make any sense to you.”

Gojyo and Hakkai understood only too well how frustrating it was to sit back and be powerless to help. It had happened to each of them at one time or another, being the one to watch patiently as a friend recovered. It was true that Hakkai had healing powers, but even he couldn’t do everything. There had been many times when they had had to search for other cures, or wait for nature to take its course, or hope for intervention from somewhere else.

Eventually, Dr. Taiso stood up. “I have two patients to care for now, so things are going to get very busy. I’ll need your help to keep an eye on both of them. I expect Sanzo will be fine, but I’m going to keep him sedated for a few days. That gives you,” he turned a steely gaze on Hakkai, “two days to rest up and take care of yourself. I know you want to help your friend, but I’m an old man and I don’t want to end up with three patients. You understand? He’ll be fine until then if we keep him quiet so that he doesn’t mess with those stitches.”

Hakkai found himself looking back at both the doctor and Gojyo who were giving him suspicious looks. The chi master’s first impulse was to go over and pour the rest of his healing energy into Sanzo, but he couldn’t deny what the results were likely to be. Faced with logic and determination, Hakkai held his hands in front of himself in a gesture of placation and yielded. “Can I at least continue to help you with the tonics?”

The doctor nodded, happy that he’d made his point so easily. Hakkai could assist him to prepare the supplements and tonics while sitting down and it would be a big help to him. ‘At least this one is less stubborn than the one across the hall,’ he thought to himself

The men fell into a routine again. Sanzo was kept in a twilight state for two days until Hakkai was strong enough to mend the severed abdominal walls. Goku was the one primarily responsible for his care, but Gojyo went back and forth between the two rooms and helped where he was needed.

The child continued to grow at an astonishing rate. Now the third day after surgery, the boy was nearly thirty-six inches tall and weighed twenty-five pounds. Occasionally, he would open his eyes and respond to stimulus, but he seemed to be unconscious for most of the time. It was probably a blessing in the end since he often seemed to be in horrific pain, which was probably linked to periods of active growth.

Hakkai finally healed the last of the surgical damage to Sanzo’s abdomen, but he couldn’t do anything about the toll the ‘pregnancy’ itself had taken. Sanzo’s body wanted rest. Even as much as he wanted to continue West, his body demanded more time. During the next few days, he got around with help from Goku and took his meals in his room.

The group was no longer able to eat together. Dr. Taiso was uncomfortable leaving the child for any length of time and would only do so to eat, sleep, or check on Sanzo, if Hakkai was able to take over. Sanzo had yet to ask about the child. Taiso wanted to speak to Sanzo about it, decisions were going to have to be made and he believed Sanzo had a right to input as the boy’s ‘father’, but Hakkai and Gojyo had discouraged the doctor up to that point. No one was certain how Sanzo would react and if he wasn’t talking about it on his own, that probably meant he didn’t want to. Unfortunately, no one shared this idea with Goku.

On the seventh day, Sanzo was back to wearing his regular clothing and was getting around normally. He was beginning to get anxious to get back on the road. They had been in town for a full two weeks now and the priest wasn’t accustomed to staying still this long. On this night, Hakkai was taking a turn watching over the child while Dr. Taiso ate with the other three.

Sanzo turned to Gojyo, “Tell Hakkai I want to see him later. We need to start getting supplies together and he’s the one who knows what we need.” It was a subtle way of bringing up the topic of leaving, which they had all been avoiding.

Goku watched as Taiso and Gojyo stared at Sanzo. Neither man said anything, but from the looks on their faces they seemed surprised. Eventually Gojyo nodded and both men went back to eating without saying anything. Sanzo stared back at them for a while, confused by their extreme reaction.

Goku looked at the doctor. It was true that Dr. Taiso wasn’t a young man, but he had seemed especially haggard for the last few days. Goku had thought that the doctor would be happy and not so worried now that Sanzo was up and around and decided that there must be another reason for his exhaustion and concern.

“It must be really hard work taking care of a baby, huh?” Hakkai had always stressed the importance of asking questions to things Goku didn’t understand. He’d never taken care of a baby. He’d barely had opportunities to see more than a rare glimpse of some on their travels. Babies weren’t particularly common in most monasteries.

Three faces turned and looked at Goku. Since no one was answering his question, he thought maybe he hadn’t been clear. “I mean, you guys all look so tired all of the time and there’s three of you taking care of just the one baby. Is it a lot of work? Do you need help? Sanzo doesn’t need me so much any more and I’d be really careful with him.”

There it was. The subject no one wanted to talk about was finally out in the open and everyone’s eyes turned to Sanzo. Dr. Taiso felt that this decision belonged to him. Gojyo just wanted to be anywhere else but in this room at this time. Goku looked both hopeful and excited.

“Can we go see him, Sanzo? You haven’t had a chance to see him since you got better and I’d like to see him with you. Can we go over and visit with him and Hakkai after lunch?”

Sanzo put his elbows on the table and dropped his head into his hands. He wanted to be angry at Goku, but he was really only angry at himself. This was bound to come up sooner or later and he had put it off too long. Whether he wanted to deal with it or not, this child was a reality and he was now responsible for it.

“I don’t think they need your help, Goku. The doctor is perfectly capable of taking care of it all by himself, but if you really want to go over, you can.” Sanzo watched as Goku’s expression went from excited, to disappointed, to happy. Goku had no hidden agendas; what he felt, he showed. Some people thought that made Goku foolish; Sanzo thought that made him pure. He might never win a poker game with that face, but he was a better adjusted person than the other three put together.

After lunch, Sanzo followed the three men across the hall, but lingered just outside the room. He waited as the doctor and Gojyo entered and heard Goku take several steps into the room. Trying to summon his nerve, Goku’s sudden shout forced his legs into movement and he dashed into the room. He was prepared to see danger, but the room was still.

Goku stood staring at one of the beds and the young boy who lay on top of it. The boy looked about seven years of age and was sound asleep on the bed. Sanzo looked around the room, wondering where the baby had gotten to and who this child was. Just as he turned back, he started to ask, “Where is the…” but he got no further. At the sound of his voice, the child on the bed turned his head and stared at him with the eyes of Koumyou Sanzo.


	9. Chapter 9

Sanzo stood, frozen in place, pinned by eyes he hadn’t seen for more than half his lifetime. The spell was broken when Hakkai moved to stand between him and those impossible eyes and then Goku touched his arm.

“Sanzo?” Hakkai’s voice was trying to break through the numbness in his brain. “Sanzo? Can you hear me?”

Dr. Taiso shook his head. He had been afraid that it would be hard for the priest the longer they waited, but there was really no good way to explain it all. “Goku, would you bring Sanzo over here and sit him on the other bed? Gojyo, please fetch a glass of water for him.” The doctor at least managed to get things into motion again. He pulled up a chair and placed it between the beds, directly in front of Sanzo.

When the water arrived, Taiso took Sanzo’s hand and placed the glass in it. “Drink, and then we’ll talk.”

Sanzo’s hand shook as he raised the glass to his lips for a sip. He wasn’t prepared for this. He’d been trying desperately to forget that he had a baby. How did some baby he’d never seen, end up turning into a seven year old when he wasn’t looking? He stared again at the young boy on the bed. There were hints of Koumyou’s face there, but it was the eyes that had gotten to him. Those were definitely Koumyou’s eyes. He’d know them anywhere, anytime.

Sanzo half listened as the doctor quoted the facts to him. He vaguely heard things about metabolism and heart rate, respirations and blood pressure; none of it made any sense. What he did understand was that none of them had any idea why this had happened, but that this was indeed his child here in the room.

While Dr. Taiso was speaking to Sanzo, Hakkai and Gojyo took Goku into the far corner of the room for their own conversation.

“I know you have a lot of questions, Goku, but the fact is that we don’t really know what’s going on.” Hakkai had watched the child for a week now. “He’s grown incredibly quickly physically, but mentally, he’s just not there.”

“That’s another thing, Hakkai. Don’t you think it’s kinda freaky the way he responded to Sanzo’s voice? He never opened his eyes for one of us unless we were touching him, and he certainly didn’t turn his head to look for us.” Gojyo felt a growing concern about the boy after witnessing that reaction.

“That is odd, Gojyo. I guess I had assumed he was simply responding to the most familiar voice. They say babies respond to things they heard in the womb and Sanzo’s voice should be the one he’d heard most often.”

“But it’s not,” Goku asserted, finally joining the conversation. “Sanzo never talks a lot and hardly at all the two weeks before the surgery. I sat with him and talked to him all the time. Sometimes he would talk back, but not very often.”

One eyebrow raised and nodding his head, Gojyo looked back at Hakkai as though he’d proven a point.

Hakkai tugged on one ear while he thought. “Alright, Goku, go stand at the edge of the bed and say something to him.”

Goku walked to the foot of the bed where the boy was once again sleeping. “Hiya. My name’s Goku. Nice to meetcha.”

The boy continued to sleep.

The three men exchanged a look, Gojyo had made his point.

Any further talk of moving West was put on hold, because Sanzo wasn’t speaking. He sat in the room every day and watched his ‘son’ grow. The child was growing the equivalent of a human year a day. Dr. Taiso had expressed the vague hope that the near coma-like conditions were a result of the growing process and the extreme pain the boy was experiencing. The doctor would administer small amounts of pain killer along with the regular feedings at times when he looked as though he was in particular distress, but other than that, it was a waiting game.

The time dragged on. Now that they had two extra sets of eyes and ears to watch the boy, Hakkai and the doctor could afford to rest more between generating the dozens of tonics and food supplements that the growing adolescent required. It was difficult work making certain that all the right things got into the preparations and that they were properly handled so that the tonics were effective. The first two weeks were the worst; the period of extreme growth to the age of 14 made the calculations even more delicate for the overworked physician. In addition, he had serious concerns now about Sanzo, who was watching the child obsessively.

Early on when it became apparent that Sanzo wasn’t returning to his own room, Gojyo and Hakkai packed up Sanzo’s things and swapped rooms with him. Now Sanzo spent most of his time chain smoking in a stiff-backed chair by the bed. After two weeks without a cigarette, it was as though he was trying to make up for lost time. In truth, he was smoking to calm his nerves and occupy his time. Sanzo wasn’t a patient man by nature, and this past month had pushed him to his mental and physical limits.

Sanzo leaned over the bathroom sink and let the cold water roll down his face. He had tried to stay in the room once when Dr. Taiso was tube feeding the boy, but he couldn’t bear it. No matter how hard he tried to distance himself, no matter how often he told himself that this was not Koumyou, the look of that face and those eyes haunted him. He couldn’t bear to watch ‘Koumyou’ going through this.

They had reached the three week mark and they now had a mostly unresponsive twenty-one year old equivalent ‘man’ to take care of. Dr. Taiso would have thought the boy to be a complete vegetable except for his persistent reactions to the sound of Sanzo’s voice. That, however, had been the only positive sign since his birth; there had been no progress since then.

For several days prior to this, each of the others had tried to talk to the priest about the situation. Now Sanzo had to admit to himself that things would never change. It was time to decide what to do.

When Dr. Taiso completed his treatment, Sanzo re-entered the room and walked to the dresser where he kept the sutra. This sacred scripture bound the two men together and was physical proof of their history. As he touched the scroll, the priest stopped fighting his feelings and allowed himself to slip back into his memories. He remembered all the moments with his master, both good and bad. Life was simpler when he was just Kouryou and when Koumyou Sanzo was the only man he trusted and believed in. Now the burden of the scripture had fallen to him and he believed only in it and himself.

Dr. Taiso’s voice broke through Sanzo’s reverie. “He moved.”

Turning around, Sanzo saw that the boy’s eyes were open and he was extending a hand in Sanzo’s direction. To this point, the child had never shown any sign of independent movement, only the opening and closing of his eyes. As Sanzo followed the direction of those eyes, he realized that the boy was not looking at him, but at the sutra.

Slowly, Sanzo walked back to his chair and sat down, scripture still in his hand. Leaning forward in the chair, Sanzo put his hand, still holding the sutra, on the boy’s chest. The boy let his hand drop to his side and closed his eyes for a moment. The seconds ticked away and Sanzo began to wonder what it all meant.

Once again, the boy’s hand began to move. First it sought out Sanzo’s sleeve and then followed it down the length of the priest’s arm. When it reached Sanzo’s hand, rather than reaching for the Maten scripture as the priest had expected, the boy reached his hand around Sanzo’s and closed it tightly over the scroll. When the young man’s eyes opened again, they were fixed on Sanzo’s face.

Sanzo stared in wonder and confusion. “Why?” he asked.

The hand holding Sanzo’s squeezed tightly one last time and then dropped back to his side. If there was to be any other answer, it was only in the single tear which fell from the boy’s eyes before they closed again in deep slumber.

Across the room, the others stood transfixed by what they’d seen.

“Whoa,” Gojyo whispered as he fell back to lean against the wall.

Hakkai looked at the doctor and silently asked for an explanation. With a shrug of his shoulders, Taiso let him know there wasn’t one to be had.

Goku quietly padded across the room and stood behind Sanzo’s chair. “Is there anything that I can do, Sanzo?” he asked softly.

Sanzo remained silent for a few minutes, staring at the face of his former master now sleeping peacefully on the bed in front of him. “Watch him for me, would you, Goku? I need to go out for a minute.”

“Sure thing, Sanzo.” Goku stepped back and allowed Sanzo to stand and walk to the door before he took his place in the chair.

As Sanzo reached the door, Hakkai asked, “Would you like some company, Sanzo?”

Sanzo’s voice was quiet but emphatic when he answered, “No.”

It was the first time Sanzo had stepped outside of the inn since they arrived five weeks ago. It was like being in the town for the first time, rather than having been here longer than he had in any single place since leaving the temple. He walked to the edge of town in a random direction and then followed the perimeter around. It took him an hour to walk all the way around the small but sprawling village and he found what he was looking for just to the east. A short way from town, there was a small hill that would face the rising sun. He stopped at the base of that hill and smoked a cigarette as he looked at the moon.

When he finished, he ground the cigarette out under his sandal and returned to the room where he took up his vigil once more. Despite offers to watch over the boy for him, Sanzo remained on the chair and watched him sleep until just before dawn. As the first hints of day began to lighten the sky, Sanzo tucked his gun in his robes and put the sutra on his shoulders.

Back on the bed, the young man who looked so much like Koumyou slept on peacefully. Sanzo felt a moment of hesitation and sadness before forcing himself to move. Picking up the boy was easier than he thought. Even with the doctor’s care, his slight frame carried very little weight. Still, it would be a long walk out of town and he was doubtful that he could make the distance with this burden.

Gojyo’s voice asked from the doorway, “You gonna let us help you this time?”

Standing framed in the doorway, Gojyo and Hakkai were fully dressed and ready to go. Behind them, he could see the forms of Goku and Dr. Taiso.

Sanzo was torn. On one hand, this was extremely private and extremely painful. To have witnesses to this event in his life made him uncomfortable. On the other, these men had been with him from the beginning of this mess and had a right to see it through. In all honesty, he would never make the hill without assistance and he knew that if he asked for privacy once they arrived, his friends would stay a respectful distance away. That would be enough.

Inclining his head once, Sanzo waited for Gojyo to move into the room and carefully handed the young man to his friend. As Gojyo took the body into his arms, Sanzo let his hand linger for just a moment on the boy’s head before letting it drop to his side. It was time to go.

He led the other four men out of the inn and into the hazy morning fog. It wasn’t a long walk to the hill and Sanzo found himself slowing his steps every so often, reluctant to make this final journey. All too soon, they had arrived and Sanzo directed Gojyo to lay the boy down in a clearing at the top of the rise. When he looked back, he saw that the others had remained at the bottom of the small hill, about fifteen feet away. When Gojyo finished his task, he reached out and gave Sanzo’s shoulder a small squeeze before heading back down the hill to join the others.

Finally alone, he turned his back to his friends and sat down on the grassy slope. He allowed himself one last look at the body of Koumyou Sanzo before closing his eyes and beginning to chant the sutra.

Dr. Taiso stood with the other three men at the bottom of the rise and waited to see what would happen. As a doctor, he was sworn to uphold life, but in all his years he’d never been faced with a situation like this and he wasn’t sure what he would have advised Sanzo, if he’d ever been given the chance. As it was, it seemed that the decision had been made and he stood by his new friends, determined to see it to the end.

As the sun finished cresting the horizon, the sutra burst forth from Sanzo’s shoulders and enveloped the young man lying on the ground. Four men looked on as the body disappeared from view and listened to the powerful voice of a true Sanzo priest. He continued to chant until the full light of day and then his voice stilled and the sutra calmed.

As Sanzo finished speaking the last syllables of the sutra, he opened his eyes and watched as the scripture returned to its place on his shoulders. He felt the weight more acutely that morning than he had in a long time. When he could finally see the spot where the body had once been, Sanzo saw nothing but an empty glade. A movement caught his eye and he realized that the space was not completely empty after all. An orange and black Monarch butterfly sat on the grass, slowly moving its wings.

Sanzo sat motionless and watched, hypnotized, as the insect gently opened and closed its colorful wings and then took flight. When the creature was finally high enough in the sky, Sanzo saw how vibrantly the orange of its body contrasted with the clear blue sky. As it ascended, Sanzo continued to watch until he could no longer see the butterfly’s color or form.

Then he closed his eyes, and said goodbye.


End file.
